1995 Buick Regal car spits, sputters and stalls while driv

MOOF2BEU

MEMBER
1995 BUICK REGAL
6 CYL
FWD
AUTOMATIC
196,000 MILES

When I first start the car, all seems fine. As soon as I press the accelerator tho, it spits and sputters as if there was no gas in in unless I push the accelerator hard to go fast right away. Then as is well again until reach 40-60 mph. At this point it spits and sputters again only if my foot is pressing the accelerator (no problems at 40-60 if accelerator is not pressed).

While driving, if I take my foot off of the accelerator, the RPMs go down to 1,000 and then drop to nothing causing the car to stall. This also happens if I press the brake. I have noticed that when I brake the RPMs will drop to 500, shoot back up to 1,200, go down to 500, the needle tremors for half a second, and either recovers from me pushing the accelerator or drops and stalls out. The car always starts right back up when I put it in neutral

If I drive the car for 45 mins. Or longer, the entire problem is nonexistant. PLEASE HELP ME!

5 Replies

MADMIKE1735

MECHANIC
951 POSTS

Start with the simple and most important. Fuel filter. Hope that fixes it. Assuming this is a 3.1 or 3.4 it may be the lower intake manifold. However the head gasket leaks on the rear bank, cyl 2. There are a bunch of bulletins on these engines, so if u do lower intake gaskets, might as well do head gaskets and same your self alot of frustration.

SPONSORED LINKS

Was this

answer

helpful?

Yes

No

Thursday, August 26th, 2010 AT 10:19 PM

MOOF2BEU

MEMBER
3 POSTS

I changed the fuel filter. No difference. The car is a 3.8, so could it still be the gaskets causing the problem? There is also a rthymic knocking sound comeing from near the powersteering pump. I doubt that is related to the main problem tho.

Was this

answer

helpful?

Yes

No

-1

Saturday, August 28th, 2010 AT 4:20 PM

MADMIKE1735

MECHANIC
951 POSTS

These engines were put into alot of different model gms, so there is alot of knowledge on them. However, keep in mind I dont have your vehicle in front of me, so I can only take your word for things, and steer you in the right direction. With that being said, lets start from the beginning. Is there a check engine light? Noticed the car has almost 200k miles on it. A coil pack is bound to go bad, but that usually gives a misfire at idle, and becomming more noticeable as RPMs increase. If there is a service engine light on, get it scanned. Let me know the code. If not, then we go to the next thing. Air filter. Is it clean? Also, spark plugs and wires. If they were done, are they AC delcos? GM engines are tempermental with plugs. They sometimes run like crap with anything but delcos. If the lower intake is leaking, you will see a puddle of coolant/oil most noticeable on the driverside of the engine, just above the transmission. Let me know what you find.

Was this

answer

helpful?

Yes

No

Saturday, August 28th, 2010 AT 8:49 PM

DAKOTAFAN88

MEMBER
3 POSTS

I have a 95 regal with a 3.8 that does exactly the same thing. When I got the vehicle it worked perfectly fine but now this. I too changed the fuel filter. I have had it into 2 or 3 shops and no one could give me a solution. The last shop told me it is more than likely a bad sensor or a traveling electrical problem but they are unsure which

Was this

answer

helpful?

Yes

No

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 AT 1:07 PM

MOOF2BEU

MEMBER
3 POSTS

I took it to a shop and the codes came up EGR and torque convertor. So I got a diff. Car lol. There was no point in fixing a car that probably has transmission issues caused by the torque convertor. Thank-you for the help though.