92 LE wagon trans/fuel problem?

[Petekill]

Hi all,

I'm posting on behalf of my mother's 92 Camry V6 LE wagon. It has served us very well for the past 14 years, but it seems to have developed a worrisome problem.

I hadn't driven it in a couple months (I have my own car) and while I was driving it, I noticed that there was some hesitation when stepping on the gas from a stop. It didn't really seem like a transmission issue, there wasn't any jerking or sharp thunks, just some rumble, and it felt like it didn't want to go. Today, while riding with her in the car, we pulled out onto a street with maybe 3/4 throttle start, the engine coughed and stuttered up to about 5k rpm. It didn't feel like it had any less power than usual, it just stuttered while pulling.

At first I thought it was transmisison problems, but she believes it is fuel-related. Now that I think about it more, it doesn't really seem like the transmisison.

I know basically nothing about camrys, any ideas?

[Eye8Pussies]

fuel injectors? fuel pump? bad spark? misfires?

sounds like one of those rather ambiguous problems that could be a whole bunch of things

[Cyorke]

try throttle body cleaning, you can do a search on seafoam and try that. full fuel system cleaning, replace fue filter.

THose are the first things to try checking on.

what kind of service has it had done to it? Has it had normal maintenance like tune ups and things like that?

[Digger1]

Hi Pete,

FWIW:

My memory is getting fuzzy, but I had an '85 Camry w/ the I-4 that had a similar problem. I busted my ass trying to fix the problem before I found the solution.

YMMV, but my old car had a small pick-up coil inside the distributor that sat on the vacuum advance plate (forgive the terminology - it is probably not correct as my memory of the problem is fuzzy). One of the small wires leading to the pick-up coil had a break inside the insulation. Every time the vacuum advance plate moved (i.e., every time I hit the gas from a stop), the wire flexed and I would get a momentary open circuit, thus cutting the ignition to the engine for a split second. Then, the wire strands would come back together and the engine would kick back in.

I won't tell you how many other things I replaced/"fixed" before I found my problem. As I recall, the part was not cheap!

Good luck!

[2wickedtoyz]

change the fuel filter it can be as easy as that

[Nad1370]

Stale gas.

Moisture must have formed inside the gas tank and diluted the gas.
Drain it and get some fresh one's in there. Clean the injectors and replace the fuel filter.