96 Altima performance trouble

I have a 96 Altima with 108,000 miles on it. It was running fine. My wife parked it, it was running fine, and when she came back out after an hour or two it would not run properly. It idles like it is running very rich, you can smell a gas odor form the exhaust. When you try to rev the engine in nuetral it stalls instantly. Idles very rough. There is no check engine light on.

What do some of you experienced folks think?

Will the engine still start if the cam position sensor is malfunctioning?

Any help will be appreciated.

Paul

Well folks I see the thread has been looked at 11 times with no responses.

Let me tell you what I found. The cam position device is actually a encoder. Oil leaked from a seal at the end of the camshalf in the distributor. I cleaned the inside with brake cleaner and it ran like new. So to answer my own question, the motor will start but not run above idle and not idle very well. It seems the cam sensor affects the timing and the fuel.

I picked up a new seal for it today at Nissan, $7.00 for a lousy O-ring.

Paul

the distirbutors are know for going out if you could rev it to 4000 and leave off the gas if it stalls it needs a distib.

I wish I had read this forum a month ago! I found the same problem with an oil leak into the distributor yesterday. Last month I though I bought bad gas and took it to a repair shop, $217 later the problem was still there. I took it to Peters Nissan in Nashua they charged me $117 to tell me that there was nothing wrong with the car. They hooked it up to their "super computer" and that was all they could do to trouble shoot the problem! I asked if they ever heard of this problem and they shrugged their shoulders, as if to say trade it, and told me they never seen this problem before. A week later it stalled again. Now that I read your note it appears to be a common problem! At first I thought it was a leaking fuel injector flooding the engine...

cheapest distributor i can find is 150 bucks so im gonna try your brake cleaner method

Okay, so my whole engine is jumping quite frequently after starting my car. While in idle the engine revs from around 1000 to 2000. When I drive the car once I get it over about 30 mph for over 20 seconds it stops jumping. I changed the spark plugs, added fuel additive, and am still having problems. I'm thinking of checking the distributr cap, but that's precisely why I posted. A lot of times I've read that the 1996 nissan altima's have head gasket leakage. This leaks oil into the distributor cap. Could be part of the problem you guys are having, too.