sc

Well the car finally arrived after a week in transport. A 1990 C4. Car started fine and idled ok when pulled out of the truck and everything. Go to take her home and after not even a mile it started to stall as if it ran out of gas (tank is half full). The warning (!) light comes on and a beep..beep.beep. Decided to pull over and turn the engine off to see if it resets. Started it back up again and rough idle and stalling continued to get even worse and tried to push the car with flooring it but it stalled really bad and lurched back and forth. Had it flat bed to my house for now and not sure what is wrong. It starts every time I try but won't idle smoothly and will eventually die. It will stall if I try to take off. The oil pressure gauge goes up and down in concert to the rough idling.

Any ideas? A bit disappointed after waiting for over week and already this. I hope it's nothing too serious. Any bay area guys willing to help?

Indycam

Bad ignition would be my guess .
Bad coil/s , bad wires , bad caps , bad rotors , bad plugs , etc .

"Any bay area guys willing to help?"
Santa Cruz close enough ?

sc

I'm in Fremont so it's a ways. PO says car ran perfectly when it left MD. He did encounter a rough idle years ago and the mech cleaned out the idle control valve and was fine after that. This car had passed PPI with flying colors. Compression/leak down all good. I'll keep the coils in mind. I was hoping it was something that got knocked loose during transit. I'm very new to 964s or 911s in general. Car has 69K miles.

sml

indycam is the most knowledgeable here .. so i would start with his tips.

sc

Thanks guys! Another thing I noticed earlier when I tried to start with the rear lid open is there is a clicking noise during rough idle. The clicks come when RPM goes down. Could it be sparks?

Makmov

A priority I alarm e.g. light and warning buzzer, pertains brake pressure, abs, and interlocking errors.

Are there any other lights on? Do they all work?

It is easy enought to check all the high tension leads and make sure none are loose.

could have broke the dist. belt

pull both caps and see if the secondary turns freely or if there are any burnt spots inside the cap.

Oil pressure on one of these cars is very sensitive to RPMs. 1 bar per 1000 RPM or so.

sml

Makmov is not bad either ;P (not necessarily the post above, just in general).


..

anyway seems very odd that all was great before shipping and now it is screwed ... something is not right .. could the shipping company have given it a thrash? what was the odometer reading when handed-over to shipping company?

newsboy

Your car seems to be in "limp home mode". As pointed out above, most likely an electrical problem. Easy to check plug wires for arcing, by running in the dark, and misting with some water. Coils, seem to be a common problem (can have internal faults, even if they test within limits). Easy to replace, and not to expensive.

sc

Tried to start it this morning and this time the car idled better but still not 100% but hovering below 1K RPM. The air through the vents felt erratic which I hadn't noticed yesterday. I was tempted to drive off but feared it would stall so I let it idle a while and eventually died on its' own. During idle the warning light remained lit along with the seatbelt, airbag, and rear spoiler. When it died all warning lights came on.

I contacted Tom Amon. Hopefully he can take a look this afternoon. Will keep you guys posted. Thanks for all the suggestions thus far. I'm not mech inclined but learning. Other than this the car is an absolute beaut! Pics to come once I get her sorted out. She's playing hard to get.

SuperUser

Any chance the battery got unhooked? It takes the ECU some time to sort out the idle if it did.

jimq

take out the DME relay from the front fuse box and give it a knock on the concrete and put back in.

c didy

Or buy a new 1 and keep the old 1 as a spare. That is considered good advice.

Basalt997tt

Definitely the way I plan to go!

Igaffz

Mine had an erratic idle causing all sorts of mayhem, turned out to be a dodgy distributor cap. Replaced both of them and never looked back! Goes like a train!

klr10

Don't get disheartened as they say 'old is gold' these babies are all over twenty years old and can be a little cantakerous. You will soon fix the problems and feel even more attached to it (ask me how I know).

If you can find a local owner rennlister they will probably get you fixed up in no time, your problems sound very similar to mine when I first got my 964. Would I ever sell? Hell No!