1988 98 Touring Sedan, 145,000 miles.

Every few starts, the car will idle rough and try to stall. Sometimes this goes away as soon as I start to drive the car, other times it last until I have gone through several stop signs/lights. The problem never last longer than that. Once the car has stopped shaking (after no more then 2-3 stop signs/traffic lights) it will not do it again.

Sometimes when it is shaking at idle, the car will have almost no power with the accelerator depressed.

The only way to stop the car from stalling is to "give it gas" when this is happening.

There are no check engine lights and all the gauges read fine. The car has gas.

I brought it to the shop, they tried replacing the EGR valve, cleaned the throttle plates, air filter, and replaced the oxygen sensor.

Any ideas?

The shop replaced the Mass Air Flow (MAF) Sensor which seems to have done the trick. Surprisingly the car even passed the emissions test yesterday on the first try.

It still has a rough idle from time to time and struggles to move even when the tachometer indicates 2-3k RPM.

The shop tried changing the O2 sensor as well.

Any ideas?

Is the car shifting okay?

Have they checked the IAC Valve out?

Sounds like they're throwing a lot of parts at it instead of actually diagnosing the problem.

TOC Admin
Brando

Transmission shifts fine, I'll have to look up an IAC but I dont think its been looked at. It almost seems like the car idles too low. Once it is warm its idling at 500-600rpm, does that sound right?

I'm not sure about an '88, but I find my Olds idling between 1000 and 1100 RPM.. Or so I recall. You may very well be idling too low if my memory is faulting me, or if the differences in the engines really makes that big of a difference.