New Car and New Problems...Help!!!
 

In December of last year i purchased a 99 Alero with the 3400 engine... It ran great for a month or two and then hell brokke loose in the form of several little problems. I guess illl just start from the beginning...

1. The first of the issues occurs when i first start the car. Some times it will start right up, runs at the right rpm, and i have no problem. Other times, more frequent, it will start and jump back and forth between about 500 and 1100 rpms. I don't know what it is and its really becoming a problem.

2. The second happens when i am driving. This usually happens anytime i have been driving for a while, like 20 min or so. The temperature guage will drop as if it is not functioning and at the same time the RPMs will spike. When it is in drive at a stop it will be at a steady 1500 rpms, and if you shift it into park or nuetral it will scream at about 3000 to 3500.

I took it to a shop and they said they could find out what it was for about 50 dollars to run a diagnostic but im pressed for cash and i am mechanically able if i could just know what to do. I replaced the plugs and wires, regular oil changes, tranny fluid change when i got the car...just got it up to date. If anyone knows my problem, please help... I am new to aleros, always been with a grand am 2.4, so this is a little new to me. I plan to "pimp" it out performance wise in the future but i need to get it running okay first....thank you for any advise, Caleb

Is it throwing any codes?

sounds like something with the throttle body..... check and see if any of the cables are sticking.

Either TB or O2 sensor or camshaft position sensor. Could be a lot until we know more.

I am taking it to Autozone to see what codes there are. Check engine light is on...

Let us know what code comes up and we will try to help.

What about throttle response time.. is it alot slower than it was originally.

throttle position sensor?, had a similar problem like 6 months ago.

So I took my car to autozone and oh my did i have some codes thrown...
p0101, p0102, p0118, and p0305
They printed out their little papers to tell me what could be the reason for the code and all i really got out of it was there is a o2 sensor bad on bank one and the maf or map sensor not funtioning or something like that... Thank you all for any informaion that you can help with...
Oh and by the way, some code about the water temperature sending unit being bad which could explain why my temp guage goes crazy and causes my RPM's to go wack, and again thank you for any advice, Caleb

thats alot of codes, your computer could be fried...ive only heard stories though. i cant tell you for sure.

PO101= Mass air flow sensor circuit, range or performance problem
PO102= Mass air flow sensor circuit, low input
PO118= Engine coolant temperature circuit, hight input
PO305= Cylinder no. 5 misfire detected

yea what ^^^^^^^ said... :haha: