Ok I purchased a 2000 EX 65,000 miles as a second car from my work. I'm a service writer at a VW dealer. I have put about 1500 miles on it and always thought the car was a little under powered,but my other vehicle is a tuned 2006 Trailblazer SS..Anyways the car seemed to always have a slight hesitation when acclerating around 2500-3500. Mostly after it's warmed up. Then one day it started skipping really bad on my way to work,stalled a few times,acted like it was flooded and barely started. Once I got it started it drove the next few miles ok. I had a tech look at it and he found the fuel filter with some gunk in it. He pulled the tank and the tank was clean along with the gas. He replaced the sock on the pump and the car ran great for about the next 200 miles. Then it went back to my original problem, the slight hesitation. Well just the other day as I pushed in the clutch and rolled to a stop the car stalled. Had a hard time starting again. Got it started and I made my last 20 mins home ok. The car has a new distributor and wires that were on it when I bought it. Any suggestions???

 

How old are the spark plugs? Have you inspected the inside of the cap and the rotor? Any CEL codes?

 

Thanks for the reply. The plugs are NKG, OEM heat range. We didn't look in the distrib. yet. I will post back as soon as I can. Thanks again!!

 

Pulled the distrib off. There was a small amount of oil in there. Also the tips looked slightly corroded.

 

Is there a check engine light? If there is an oil leak, it could be leaking onto one of your sensors. Same thing happend in my last car. The cam positioning sensor had oil on it from the leak and had been causing the car to sputter and eventually die. Then start up later.

 

You may just want to replace the whole distributor.

 

ok..no cel..does the dist. have a seal in in preventing the oil from getting in there?

 

There is an oil seal inside the distributor that can be replaced, but the seal may be difficult to find and replace.

 

Thanks Ron for the tips..I haave another question for you. We removed the entire distrib and had it apart to check everything. Replaced the o-ring seal and reinstalled. My intentions were to drive and recheck the cap for any oil. Well now the car has a CEL with a crankshaft pos. sensor range/performance circuit A code. The mechanical timing is dead on. The car revs to 3500 rpm max at driving/idle, stops like there is a rev limiter. My tech told me no matter what he does he can't get the distrib to adjust enough for the timing. Any suggestions?

 

You need first to fix the crank position (CKP) sensor code problem. Start by checking the resistance of the sensor. It should be 350-700 Ohms. If not, then you would need to replace the distributor.

If after the CKP problem is fixed, the ignition timing still cannot be set to spec, then the timing belt may have skipped a tooth.