94 corolla - car shaking vigorously - please help!

[mavsham]

mine is 1.6L 5 gear manual....

when i am driving the car/engine starts shaking vigorously... by shaking i mean the exact effect you get when u try to pick up a car in high gear or drive it at low speeds in a higher gear... u know they way the engine shakes/knocks then... that is exactly what is happening here... there is no noise of any kinds just the engine starts shaking vigorously like explained above.. i switch gears either to 1 lower or to neutral and then back to the same and it goes away for some time... sadly i have not been able to reproduce the problem at will... i cant detect any pattern of when/how it exactly happens

sequence of events:

01. i start the car --- everything is normal no funny sounds/smells
02. car picks up fine no problems and i am on the road driving...
03. suddeny while i am in 4th gear driving around 50-55 mph the engine shaking starts happening...
04. this is all in the normal course of events.. out of the blue from nowhere.. in the last 2 days its happened when the car is in 2nd/3rd/4th gear...
05 this has been happening for 5-7 days and in the last 2 days it got very frequent. i drive 15 miles each way to work and it happened at 3-4 spaced out intervals on each way...
06. also yesterday my car stopped when i was at a light. but then started back up again w/o a problem
07. again after the above incident yesterday later at night i was taking a turn in the 2nd gear at a T and the car just stopped. the steering jammed. lights were still on although dimmer

my attempts to fix so far:

this mornig i took the day off from work and took it to the neighbor shell auto care station. its about 1/4 mile away from my house. the car started up fine this morning no shaking nothing. a/c was also on.

i suspected the battery/alternator/starter was the culprit. but my conclusion have little meaning since i am not at all knowledgable about inner workings of cars. i told the technician there about the isssue and he said the battery/alternator/starter was not a problem (w/o even testing the battery) but rather the car needed a tune up. he noticed that the ignition wires/distributor cap and rotor were all still facotry installed original ones and he was like u need a tune up...

i was not sure and told him that ONLY if this fixes the problem should he do it. so he was like i guarantee it... that this will fix it.. he said it will cost $200 plus tax for installing new sprak plugs / distributor cap and rotor and new ignition wires. i needed an oil change so he was goign to do that as well for this price..

i went to pick up car and drove it around and it ran fine... ran really well in fact... coz before at slower speeds ( < 15 mph) the car would not "cruise" smoothly but now it was ...

then i headed out again in the evening and the engine was knocking/shaking alrite...

i am furious coz the guy made me spend $200 for something that i now think was NOT needed. can some one please point me in some direction as to what i need to do... ?

other than what all i have put here... the only other observance is that this happens ONLY AFTER driving the car for 5-7 minutes or so... not rite away...

please please help!

thank you all for listening...

[mavsham]

someboy?

[veedubmechanic]

First off- If your car runs alot better after replacing those parts it WAS worth the effort and money to do it, even though it didnt fix the original problem.

Second-how many miles do u have? Is the check engine light on?

An easy check to do is check your engine/ transmission mounts. The engine mount is on the passenger side of the engine next to the windshield washer bottle. The transmission mounts are 1-directly under the intake box, 2- directly under the coolant resivour, and 3-under your throttle body. Check those visually to see if the rubber is seperating or tearing any-if so replace.

You said that the vibration and shaking gets worse at highway speeds or the faster you go? If so its most likely your wheels are out of ballance- Normal cost to ballance is about 50$ for 4 wheels.

[mavsham]

thanks for posting a response... ok odometer is just under 85,800 miles... and the check engine light is not on...

i understand that the 200 bucks were probably well spent but i did not want to spend that money now esp knowing that a) the problem is still NOT fixed b) how much cost i will actually incur to fix the real.original problem

i will inspect the parts you said and post back... but i really suspect this is something eletrical or dirt related...

coz this happens in all gears (except that its not happened in the 1st ear as yet) it happened again today... and i tried to accelerate to see what might happen but my first reflex is to switch to neutral coz the car is ready to stop...

if u can picture it ...then its exaclty the same problem ... as driving a manual car at low speeds < 20 mph in a high gear (say 4th)... u know how if u dont immedeately switch to lower gear the car engine will vibrate and the engine will stop... thats exactly it... but its baflling coz it happens very randomly... w/o reason ..

i have tried to do extensive research and with whatever i have found .. everything seems to point ot the electrical system / engine perf check etc... several places i also read about getting a thorough tune up and although thats what i got to start with ... it did not fix the problem..

will post back with new findings... thanks for the reply again

[Boricua4life50]

Well if you never figure out the problem. I have an gts- twincam engine for sale that would fit in your engine real well and you wil notice a lot of diference in the speed and power.

Do you know anybody that has an 1991 twin turbo mazda rx-7 for sale?