1992 Buick Regal Custom with a car newbie

Greetings,

My wife and I are having problems with our car. We are in college, and we both are "Car Stupid".

This is one reason I joined this forum. I can't stand not knowing how something might work when I use it almost everyday.

Another reason is, that I am in college, thus broke. This might be my ticket to finding the cheapest/free ways of getting this thing repaired, and back to how it was... it was fine until a few months ago, roughly when I started driving it. Long story short, it needs help now.

What the car does is the engine surges at idle (at least it's most noticable idling). Also, it lacks the power it used to have. Going uphill, you have to push on the gas a lot more than you had to to keep it at a constant speed, let alone to accelerate. And I live in a city that was built on hills...

Also, the SES (picked this up from the forum already, Service Engine Soon) light comes on after a bit normally, but since I found the Throttle Body (found this term under the hood, on a diagram) and plugged it back in, it hasn't. It does die more often now than it did when it was unplugged. I don't know if it is the Throttle Body, because we unplugged it (after much badgering from my wife, since I don't like having things unplugged from where they should be if we don't know what it does), and it still dies. A friends mothers bf had taken a look, and he said that he plugged something back in on the engine, a sensor of some type... if this may be relative, than I will see what I can go find when my wife gets home from work (yes she's driving it, as am I, until we can fix the problem... no choice).

We also think we have a short, since our back light sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. A mechanic (that I don't really trust nor haven't spoken to) says that our fuel injector may be going bad... It was also told to us that a sensor (heat sensor I believe) might be going bad...

That's the majority of the problems right now, at least most critical. Any help to diagnose, instead of having to pay for it, would be helpfull, and much appreciated.

If you can give me ideas of where to look also, I would be appreaciative.

Many thanks ahead of time,
Kevin Dethlefs-Moreno

BTW: I did search the forums, but there is way too much information I wish to be considered...

If you could post links to other posts, I would be glad to read those, instead of having to repeat them.

Any newbie books on Buick, or general car repair, would be nice too... especially if their free :) If nothing else, what are libraries for?

seriously i had this problem on my 91 and unlike you i'm poor and not in college and have a fiance but i still understand the frustation first of all plug it back in man if it was plugged in it the whole time you may not have had a problem is my take on that and you don't want a ghetto fix you need it Reliably fixed number two does it die right away or what? or after driving it a while it stalls and will it restart after the stall and if not how long do you have to wait? also how deep was the mechanics inspetion? sounds like the mechanic is starting with a "not enough fuel delivery" rant. which i have notice tends to lead to fuel filter and then more and more and more money later with a still broken car and hatred for the car and mechanics. if its IS a bad fuel injector run some GOOD fuel injector cleaner through it . and by surges do you mean it revs high or it jumps up then goes back down then up downupdown? about the lack of power i remember reading a post about that but it didn't apply to my prob i will try to find it again for you to read it but not now i'm going to sleep. and please post back more info as to what condition (seem) to cause what. and are you prepare to do rummaging in a junkyard Fellow Poor Guy?????? mwuahahahahahahaha

First have the code scanned. You can usually go to autozone, pepboys have your codes scanned for free. As the mechanic scans your car tell him what the car is doing wrong.

I found out the majority of my engine problems was because of a spark plug that was smashed.