My 19YO daughter has my 323 in Mass., 500 miles away from me in PA. It is randomly dieing. I'm a lifelong British car mech, so I can do stuff but am not really up on the modern electrocrap.
Bought at 102,000 6 years ago, now about 145,000. It used to stagger a bit on a hard pull, but some hard driving fixed that - my feeling was that the MAF unit was sticky. Since then it has had a trick of loosing power momentarily when you slow down quickly, then accelerating - a strong hesitation about a half sec after you get back on the gas. Occasionally the Check Engine light will flash as it coughs - this on the bigger hesitations. This can happen at random intervals - not for months, then several times in a couple of days. Or twice a day for a week, then fine for weeks again. I had it actually stall once about two years ago,and she had same last May, again after a quick slow down. It seemed to be most common if the car was being used in town traffic a lot, and got better if run hard or on open road.
It ran fine all summer until a couple of days ago, when it started doing it repeatedly. She says it died 4 or 5 times yesterday: CEL would come on after it stalled, but it started right up after a few minutes or a few tries, light went out. Same today, except where it has run perfectly after restarting, today it coughed and sputtered up a hill, then died again. Subsequently it has started and run fine for a few hundred yards several times. It always acts like it is not getting fuel.
I have a 90 323 Auto w/ a dead gearbox here, ran fine. And a couple of LX, that I could cannibalize for spares, and my 94DX daily driver. Question being, what should I take on what looks like a 500 mile each way road call? Trying to coach a 19YO via phone for diagnostics is painful!
THX, Fletcher
Bought at 102,000 6 years ago, now about 145,000. It used to stagger a bit on a hard pull, but some hard driving fixed that - my feeling was that the MAF unit was sticky. Since then it has had a trick of loosing power momentarily when you slow down quickly, then accelerating - a strong hesitation about a half sec after you get back on the gas. Occasionally the Check Engine light will flash as it coughs - this on the bigger hesitations. This can happen at random intervals - not for months, then several times in a couple of days. Or twice a day for a week, then fine for weeks again. I had it actually stall once about two years ago,and she had same last May, again after a quick slow down. It seemed to be most common if the car was being used in town traffic a lot, and got better if run hard or on open road.
It ran fine all summer until a couple of days ago, when it started doing it repeatedly. She says it died 4 or 5 times yesterday: CEL would come on after it stalled, but it started right up after a few minutes or a few tries, light went out. Same today, except where it has run perfectly after restarting, today it coughed and sputtered up a hill, then died again. Subsequently it has started and run fine for a few hundred yards several times. It always acts like it is not getting fuel.
I have a 90 323 Auto w/ a dead gearbox here, ran fine. And a couple of LX, that I could cannibalize for spares, and my 94DX daily driver. Question being, what should I take on what looks like a 500 mile each way road call? Trying to coach a 19YO via phone for diagnostics is painful!
THX, Fletcher
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