I recently became the proud owner of my wife'* '99 Olds 88. After too many issues, she bought a new car, so I get the old one...

Here'* what'* going on: When cold, the car runs fine. After about 10-15 minutes, the trouble begins. First, the idle starts to surge up and down. Sometimes it stalls. After a bit longer, it starts to 'hiccup' under acceleration. The last symptom is that the speedometer drops to '0'. It keeps doing this stuff unless you let it cool down.

We brought it to a shop, who latched onto the MAF code. They cleaned and tested it, and declared the car 'fixed'. I asked what this had to do with the speedometer problem, and just got a dirty look. It hasn't thrown a code since then, but the same problems exist.

It seems to be either heat or time related, most likely heat. Something is acting up on the warm car. My guesses would either be an electrical connection, or a solid-state device that is breaking down once up to operating temperature. The tricky part is- finding it.

I have time this weekend to start exploring. I'll look for obvious poor connections, and make sure that all grounds are clean and tight (battery has already been checked). Any thoughts on where to look? I'm an old-school shade tree mechanic, with little experience on this new-fangled stuff. I won't put a lot of money in to this car, but it is in nice shape with only 120K miles. It'd be a shame to dump it for a glitch. Again, any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

We'll get into all the other minor issues once we get the old girl running right!

do you have access to a scan tool to read data?

All I have is an OBD II reader. Saturday, I went over the entire engine compartment, looking for bad connections or loose grounds- nothing found. It'* definitely time or heat related- I let it idle in the driveway, and in about 15 minutes, it began to act up. I'm wondering if it'* a solid state component in its death throes. I once had a stereo that played fine until it warmed up. Then , it began making a thumping noise. Turned out to be a power transistor in the amp. I'm half tempted to just throw a new ECM in it.

I did a bunch of research online. Although the MAF checks OK when cool, I wonder if it has a poor ground. According to the many schematics I found, the MAF ground goes to S103 (splice?), along with a bunch of other grounds, including the VSS, among other things. From the splice, it goes to G103, which I assume is a grounding point. The problem is that I can't any information on where G103 is physically located. A poor ground there might explain the poor performance AND speedo failure.

Tuesday, I'm going to call another repair place to see if they want to tackle it. It'* hard to find a small place that knows how to fix this stuff, and I can't afford a GM dealer- the car'* not worth putting thousands into.