i need help. my girlfiendhas a 95 skylark with the 3.8L v6. she says it shudders when she drives and when i drove it you could feel it shuddering only when she hits the gas. it is an engine problem and not suspension. it sounds like it is missing but i do not want to have her buy plugs and wires with out know its for sure that. possible an ignition coil. please help. is there any way to check this better. it sounds like hell but has no check engine lights or anything like that. her dad thinks its a fuel pump but it just doesnt seem like that to me. it revs fine when it gets above 1000rpm meaning its getting enough fuel.


any help would be great.


nicholas

 

spray water at night on plugs,wire and coil when car running. If any
defect you will see some small lightning. It must be very dark around
to see it.



If nothing seem to be defect around ignition system, unplug the EGR
valve. On your car it certainly an electrical one. It look like a black
cylinder with a plug on it. I think it must be on the conductor side of
the car.

 

I think the odds are that it is the spark plug wires. Erakiel's suggestion sounds good, but unless money is real tight, or they are already fairly new, I would just do them. In my experience, the OEM wires don't last very long.

 

check the obvious things first. First Check for any codes. a code reader is cheep, if you're cheeper, bridge the 2 terminals for manual read out, and count the check engine light flashes.





when it counts it will flash a number of times, pause flash some more, pause, these pauses are the starting of a new number. So flash flash pause flash flash flash pause flash. would be 231. then in your car manuel wich you will have to buy if you wnat to do any kind of work on the car, there will be a list of codes and what they meen. Usualy if this is the case it is a sensor, just buy a new one or a new used one





if it's not giving you anything, I'd look into a trany service, atleast change the trany oil look for any grit or forign matter, that = very bad. if that still isn't the problem, your RWD? or FWD? RWD I'd check your driveshaft, bearings maybe. FWD? Hehe that's a whole other can of worms. Ither way when your troublshooting anything, you start at the simplest most obvious answer, then move on down the line.

 

take a 12volt test light go under the hood. Start the engine ground the wire of the test light to a ground, find 12 volts make sure the light lights up. Now with the engine running at idle take the sharp end of the test light go to the spark plug wires at the coil and one at a time insert the sharp end of the light into the boot of the spark plug wire. When you do this you should hear the RPM'S drop,repeat this for all six plugs, if you find on that the RPM'S don't change this is your problem child. Now you shut engine off, follow that wire to the spark plug, remove the wire from the plug, insert ascrew driver into the wire, put the metal part of the screw drive very close to metal, start engine an look for a spark between the screw driver and the closes ground you provided. If no spark is seen replace that wire and plug. I would recommend replacing all of them at once but if you don't have the cash just replace the one and your good to go.