2001 Lumina idle/maintenence questions

[tblake]

hi all. My 2001 Lumina seems to be shaking a little bit at idle, and sometimes stumbles on light accelleration. My question is, What should be done as maintence? it only has 50,000 miles on it, and the plugs and wires look good. Not cracked or anything. I was planning to do the fuel filter here soon. That just irks me that it idles that way, I mean, it seems nomal to me, thats how it has always idled, one person said that their alero doesnt idle funny like that. I know its got the 3.4 in it, but I've ridden in it, and it doesnt shake like mine when it idles. Whats funny is that it sometimes doesnt idle wierd. seems to more often when warmed up, and sometimes it will be idleing smooth and then a little tiny miss and normal again. I have also read forums of peoples luminas idleing down to 500rpm's. I find this strange, cause mine only idles down to about 800 with no accesseries running. Once again, this is a very small shake while idleing, but is noticable. its done it as long as i can remember, I was just wondering if its normal, and if my car should idle down to 5-600 rpm's. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[paulfischer]

I have 99 LTZ with the 3.8. mine idles at about 800 with nothing on.
I had some idle problems with mine, and it comes and goes.
Maybe change the plugs and wires. Check your coils.
Where do you live? I live in Chicago, and in the summer they have some reformualted gas here, and the mechanics says its hard on the injectors, and reccomend injector cleaning or running seafoam thru system.

[tblake]

hmmm, thank you, I live in minnesota. Maybe I'll try seafoam though, thankyou

[cadgear]

I have a slight shake every ten or so seconds on idle with no load on the engine (700ish RPM). However, I noticed around last summer when I replaced the plugs it was smooth as glass for some 8 months, then slowly crept back to how it was.

If you seafoam it through the intake, be sure you change (or at least check) your plugs afterwards; all that crap being burned out can foul plugs if its bad enough.

I'd say you might as well go for a fuel/air filter set, if neither has been done. When I changed my fuel filter back at 50k (when I bought the car), it was black gas that was pouring out of the filter. Performance wasn't bad when I got it, but that might have been luck.