I drive a 88 Nissan Sentra, just got head replaced, milled, new fuel pump. After all this work $1,500 bucks later, my car has rough Idling when it's in park or drive or reverse it wants to die. I took car back to repair shop had it looked at further and they can't locate the problem. When weather warms up outside, car runs good, anyone here that can explain this problem please comment... P.s going down road it's fine just idling it dies..
same thing happened with my cousins 87 civic...when they sold it the guy who bought it found out it was only a 18 dollar part and it runs perfectly now. Dunno what was actually wrong with it though. you got any leaky gaskets?? check all vacuum hoses???
See it's these damn old 87,88 foreign cars cannot go under computer diagnoses. So whats left to do guess and more guess buy more parts= MO Money and still not fixed..
have you tried something simple like turing up your idle speed. I would try to seafoam the car to clean the internals real good.
All good suggestions from the folks here. There is a way to pull codes on that cruiser by pulling the PCM from under the seat and getting flash codes. If I were going to look at it, the first thing I would do after pulling codes and hoping for direction would be to scope the O2 sensor to see if it is rich or lean, and scope the TPS. Needs to know it's at idle to know what strategy it should be using. Volt drop grounds, check for vacuum leaks, which could very well be more evident cold. Remember, stuff gets warm and expands, making things fit better, and seal better. The idle air is a good place to start as well, and the Seafoam deal is something that may need to be sprayed into the air inlet hoping to maybe clean out the passages. But, I would be rather cranky at the shop who gave up on the car after snagging your dollars.
i dont know what a sentra from the 80's has going on under the hood. but if there are sensors, id check there first. check the MAP Sensor, Throttle Postion Sensor (TPS) and IAC (as mentioned before). get a haynes manual and a multi-meter (aka volt meter). you can test the sensors without having to buy new ones. a haynes book will run you about $20 (nice to have if you run an older car anyway....)....you can get a cheap multi-meter for about $15-20 more. a sensor will probably run you close to the same, and then if its not the problem, your stuck with it. and back to the store for a different one. if those check out okay, id look at the coil pack or distributer, plugs and wire. make sure its sending out good spark when idling. good luck!
