I have a '94 Sunbird with a 5-speed. Today I was out and about, and made a stop at Harvey's for food before coming back. I sat in the car and just had the stereo running for maybe 5-10 minutes, then started the car up and left. However, I noticed that when I pulled onto the street my check engine light came on. At the next light I went to start, and the car started moving, but once it reached about 20km/h (No tach. in the car so I can't tell RPM, but that's the normal speed when the shift light would come on if I was accelerating slowly), the car started to really lug and shake, and wasn't getting anymore power. I shifted up to second and it was fine until about 30km/h (again, the normal speed when the shift light would come on) and then did the same thing. Third gear didn't give me any problems, but I shifted a little early into fourth so maybe I just missed it. The whole time the engine light would be on.

However, I stopped at a really long light and eventually the check engine light went off, but came back as soon as I revved the engine.

Any idea what the problem would be here?

No takers on this one? It's rather annoying... I'm not noticing anything wrong with the performance of the car... oil and coolant levels are fine, although today the engine temp did reach the halfway mark in drive-thru, then went back to normal when I started driving.

Is it just maybe a sensor gone bad or something?

Any help would be appreciated.

The first step is to check for codes, it really could be anything. Some auto parts stores will do it, post a code here and somebody should be able to help you.





You can't outrun the radio.

Harashi wrote:No takers on this one? It's rather annoying... I'm not noticing anything wrong with the performance of the car... oil and coolant levels are fine, although today the engine temp did reach the halfway mark in drive-thru, then went back to normal when I started driving.

Is it just maybe a sensor gone bad or something?

Any help would be appreciated.

isnt half way and normal the same thing? u said u did have a CEL so def. have that read before anything

My car usually runs at 1/4 on the temp guage so I've always considered that normal.

Is the car still messed up? Did you get somebody to pull the code yet?





You can't outrun the radio.

Can't get it into a shop until tomorrow, then I'll have someone check the codes. Car has been fine the last few days though, absolutely no problem. I'm still gonna have it checked out though just in case.

Also, Brandon Schmidt's comment is making me think: Is it normal that my normal running temp is about 1/4 on the temp guage? I don't have a cold air intake or anything like that on it , although my air conditioning was removed by one of the previous owners.

anything from 1/4 to 3/4 on the temp gauge should be fine. I have 2 GM products that both run at 1/4.





You can't outrun the radio.

Ok, good. Mine will go up to 1/2 sometimes if I'm idling, but it drops after a couple seconds.

In other news, my car has stopped throwing codes, and when I went to have it scanned nothing turned up. Quite bizarre, in my opinion.

Another thing though that I probably should've asked the mechanic about but never thought about at the time, is that often times my car will vibrate at idle, and when I rev the engine. If I'm doing about 50km/h in 4th gear it's not bad, but if I give it gas the vibration gets worse. But again, if I put it into the next gear it's not bad. Any idea what could cause this? I'm far from a mechanic but I was wondering if it could be some issue with the exhaust system, or something in the actual engine maybe?