1994 Bonneville SE

[TonyTheTech2001]

Hi All.

I have a 1994 Bonneville SE with a 3800 series motor. It has around 230,000 miles on it. It has ran outstanding for a long time. About a month or so ago, it started running rough...Like it was missing out or not firing on one cylinder. The whole car would kind of shake when accelerating but once you were out of the gas it would settle down. Now if you were going 50 mph it would shift to overdrive and start shaking again until you gassed it up past 70 mph then it would settle down quite a bit but you can still feel it as if you had a tire out of balance. My wife tried to start it today and it didn't want to start. She tried a few more times and it finally started. She said it was running worse than she had ever felt it run. She didn't get a block away and it died. She got it restarted and got it back home.

Now the whole time it was running rough, you could smell fumes like the car was running rich on fuel or something. My wife swears that the fuel gage went down 1/8th of a tank when she drove it down the block and back this morning.

Ironically enough, my bonnie is my usual to work and back ride. It didn't start doing all this until I washed it on Saturday afternoon. She doesn't get too many baths as all the paint is peeling/peeled off her anyway. I always said if I wash it she will probably fall apart. Alas...It happened. LOL

Any help on where to start to troubleshoot on this with no/little cash flow involved.

Thanks!!