celica 91 help

Hello, my friend has a 91 celica manual tran with 95,000mi

His car had a problem where it would not start if the weather was rainy or humid. When I went for a drive, the car seemed hesitant on gas and at one stop light the engine stalled. Whenever we slowed to idle the engine sounded like it was about to stop again. He was told at that time the distributer and wires should be changed.

Then recently it would not start at all on a clear day so he took it to a shop and was quoted $280 for a new starter which he thinks is ridiculously high.

I was wondering if anyone here had any solutions or suggestions that is more accurate for these symptoms? Perhaps spark plugs?

Thanks everyone for any help.

Check your grounds. Look at the 2 cables on the starter, and make sure they are not falling apart.

It is difficult to diagnose things over the internet, but you might want to change the cap/rotor/plugs, anyway.

$280 is probably right for a shop to charge. It's not that difficult of a job, if you want to do it yourself. A good (toyota) stater is around $180. So a $100 labor charge isn't too bad. Isn't great, isn't bad.. :)

I would definatly go ahead and change out the wires and plugs and see where that takes you. If that doesnt help then change out the starter (you probally needed new plugs and wires anyways). Its not too hard to do just buy one of the shop books for the car, describes how to do it in there.