I have a '91 Toyota Camry (yes, I know it’s old) with manual transmission and just 95,000 miles on it. It hasn’t had any major mechanical issues in the past.
Anyway, whenever I drive the car through a puddle of some sort, or leave the car in the driveway for more than 2 or 3 days without driving, the car has some issues. Usually I can get the car to start, but when I drive with fewer than say 2000 rpms, the car sort of temporarily stalls and requires me to go down to a lower gear. This leaves me very uncomfortable behind the wheel, and the car has, once or twice, completely stalled when I was in first gear.
When I drive the car every day for a few miles, it doesn’t tend to give me any of these problems, but if I leave it out for a few days (especially if it rains one of those days), the car acts funny.
What’s going on? Is water getting into the exhaust pipe (the car is very low to the ground) or is it just the humidity which is causing problems? What can I do?
The usual culprit when the car is affected by humidity is the secondary ignition system: spark plugs, ignition wires, distributor cap and rotor. Have any of these been changed recently?
I don’t believe those have been charged recently…but I did just get a new battery.
When the car is dry and running fine…get a spray bottle of water and start spraying ignition components until it starts to run bad. The last ignition component you sprayed will be where the problem is. Start with distributor first then wires then coil.