'94 Astro dies after high RPM

[Kamel]

My '94 Astro has been acting a little weird. I got the van not very long ago with about 151K miles and it has not been treated the best. I did quite a bit of work to it to catch up the maintenance, and am now stumped.

Sometimes the van idles very rough then dies unless you catch it in time and give it some gas. After running it at about 2K rpm for just a few seconds it seems to 'snap out of it'. I later investigated with the doghouse off and it appears to happen rather consistently after the engine reaches high rpm's.

Also, once the engine dies from this condition, it is very difficult to start. Pulsing the petal while trying to start it seems to help. Any other time, it's very easy to start as well.

Once when this happened, it threw a check engine code. I checked it and was pretty sure it was 32. There was a bit of confusion if it was 32 or 23, however.

Once looked up, this appears to indicate a possible problem with the EGR valve. I am not completely sure how to verify if the EGR valve is working or not, but I have a suspicion that that is not it since the symptoms don't completely add up (atleast, not according to the very little I know about the problem).

I am going to be moving to jacksonville, FL soon (~750 miles from here) and would like to do what I can to make sure the vehicle is fit for the drive first, so any tips on what to check before the trip would be great.

[Kamel]

I got it all sorted. Apparently, my EGR valve was sticking. I cleaned it best I could with carburetor cleaner and got it freed up quite a bit (but not perfect). I also changed the fuel filter. I am not sure if both of these things was causing it or just one of them, but this fixed it for me. If anyone is having the same problem, I would highly recommend just changing the fuel filter (cheap+easy). Then if that doesn't work, get a screened EGR valve gasket from Autozone for $5 and take the EGR valve out and clean it then put the new gasket in.

Anyway, hope this helps someone. Please reply if you use this advice and it works for you.