1996 Buick Century Problem

[JackHowitzer]

Hi, my '96 Century has been giving me problems for awhile now, and every time I take it to the shop, it's never been solved. When starting the car, it almost immediately stalls. I can get around this by revving the car right after starting it, but it will accelerate very sluggishly, and then when it's idle, like at a stop sign or red light, the car will run very rough and shake, and almost always stall again. While driving at > 30 mph, the car runs fine, but as soon as I begin to brake and slow down to like 15-10 mph it begins to shake and run rough, and then will do so worse when idle again. Is there anything I could do to fix this myself? Thanks in advance for any help.

[smith227]

can you start it and let it idle? if so get out of your car, keep it in park, and rock it back and forth. if it dies in either direction start looking at the wiring harness and see where things are getting stretched. I ran into this issue with mine and it was the wiring harness on the passenger side going into the firewall, after some slick rigging it was like new.

[JackHowitzer]

Not really, I basically have to give it gas for a few seconds to keep it idling without dying, which makes things difficult :/

[HotZ28]

Have you cleaned or replaced the idle air control (IAC)?

[JackHowitzer]

No, I havn't, but I'll try that, thank you.

[Scrapper]

if not the iac zzzz talking about check on your maf. (masive air flow) and check your throtole butter fly see if it needs cleand.

[thisnametooktolong]

it could be a leaking egr ckt, the valve leaking. or an intake leak

when it does idle, tap the maf, if the car stumbles or stalls it is bad.

it could also be low fuel pressure, regulator or pump, or (fuel filter plugged but then it would cough when you tromp on the run fine maybee) stopped up injectors


it could be the water temp partialy shorted (but unlikley)

Good luck and dont give up