I have a 1995 3.4 v6 camaro convertible. Last night when I came out of the theater, the first thing I noticed when I turned the car on was that it took a REALLY long time to start. It was semi already doing that, but never took this long. When it did turn on, the car was running extremely rough. When I got on the road, the car was SHAKING hard. I attributed it to the very cold weather and went on by my business. That's when all of a sudden, on the highway, going 60mph.. the CAR SHUT OFF. The headlights and panel lights and all that good stuff stayed on, but the RPM went to 0 and the car was... off. Luckily, it was really late and no one was on the road so I just turned the wheel toward the edge of the road. I thought I was out of gas or something, and to my surprise the car cranked right back up when I put it in park and turned it back on. Unfortunately, it was a tough trip back home as it turned off 4 more times. I'm on a very tight budget and if I could semi pinpoint what it is, I can try to avoid some diagnostic fees, as the mechanic shops around here love to fix like 7 or 8 things that don't need to be, then claim they had to do it because that might have been the problem. Any suggestions or clues?

 

i'd guess something alternator/battery related....

perhaps a lose connection could have caused it to turn off... mine had a similar thing last year... so i'd check the battery with a multimeter, and the alternator (through the battery/multimeter) with the car running

 

Could be the ignition switch located on the steering column. Mine did that a few times and that's what it turned out to be.

 

What about the car running so rough all of a sudden?

 

with my car it turned out being the chip in the distributor

 

I had the alternator and battery checked out. No problem with that. My crazy neighbor however, did unplug some sort of sensor (I don't know much about cars) and when he did, it started running better. When he plugged it back up, it would go bananas again. It's on the top of the engine toward the left side. He said it was an idle control valve or something? Would that cause the car to run hard and shut off at high speeds?

 

Coil pack? My Z24 needed a new one when it got cold and it went from having trouble starting to not starting at all, it can also be attributed to the rough idel since it deals with spark.

 

EGR Valve stuck open? that happened in my 4.3 blazer and it did similar stuff..

 

That could really be alot of things. The IAC (Idle Air Control valve) could be the culprit if unplugging it "fixed" the problem, but I wouldn't take that as gospel truth. The IAC is a little plunger (or pintle) that controls how much air bypasses the throttle body butterfly and therefore idle speed. Is it throwing an SES light? Have autozone scan it and post the codes if there are any.

 

No, the check engine light isn't coming on. Should I unplug the idle air control to trip it? Is it ok to drive with the IAC unplugged?