Idle Problems

When I am at a stop light/sign my car putters and feels jumpy, i believe it is because i need to get it idled but im not 100% sure. what might be the problem?

When I am at a stop light/sign my car putters and feels jumpy, i believe it is because i need to get it idled but im not 100% sure. what might be the problem?

Could be any number of maladies affecting the ignition and/or fuel system. Could even be vacuum leaks or even, heaven forbid, mechanical damage or wear. Could be simply a slow idle, or it could be a misfire due to any number of reasons - some mechanical and some electrical/fuel related.

Without knowing more about it (specifics, such as model year, car, EFI or carb, DIS, distributorless ignition, etc) I would suggest that you take the car somewhere and have a cylinder balance test performed. This will tell you what cylinder is dead, if you have a misfire. Before doing this, you should check the engine idle with a tachometer and adjust as necessary, following the directions on the emissions label.

From my experience, my car would sputter and die, when stopping at lights, or stopping period. Changed the EGR and solenoid, and she purred like a kitten. Couldnt even tell the engine was running. Hope this helps.

what is an EGR?

what is an EGR?

I'm not trying to condescend here, but if you don't know what the EGR system is, you shouldn't yet be turning any wrenches on it. Go to the library and read up on it a bit - if you do the wrong thing you can do some damage.

Good call silicon212. EGR stands for Exhaust Gas Recirculation system. Its function is to "inject" a small amount of the exhaust gases into the intake to reduce combustion chamber temperature and reduce emissions. Its basically an emissions device. The problem with the EGR system is that it tends to get stuck after years of carbon build-up. This can do all sorts of things to your engine (either due to not enough EGR flow due to being fully closed, or too much EGR flow due to being fully open).