Questions and Answers

Chevy Caprice Stalling At A Stop Q. Vincent, I think your site on About.com is an outstanding service. It's the best thing I've seen on the internet for car problems. I've got a 1991 Chevy Caprice wagon, with a 5.0 liter V8, automatic transmission, 160,000 miles (60,000 on this rebuilt engine), fuel injection and ABS brakes.

This car passed the Illinois EPA emissions test (finally) last year after new O2 (and some other sensor) and new fuel injectors. I've had the car into a local independent mechanic twice for this problem and he says that nothing is wrong. The car starts great. It runs great when in "Park". When you are in drive and going very slow, or stopped, the engine vacillates to where it almost dies, and then speeds up to a normal idle, then almost dies, etc.

After about 10 seconds of this, the engine dies. If you start it back up and keep it in park, it idles fine. As soon as you move back into drive, the problem comes back. This is a really irritating problem. Do you have any ideas on what we should try?

Thanks...

A. When you put it in drive, the rpm's lower. This can make a weak magnet on the distributor shaft not put out enough of a signal to fire the module. You need to put a spark tester on it and see if the spark dies out with the engine. That is what it sounds like to me. The fix would be a new distributor shaft or put a used distributor in it.