Buick Lesabre '97 is running terribly in cold weather.
 

I live in south central Idaho and we've had incredibly mild winters this past couple years. This thanksgiving, though, the weather has turned awful and my car is running terribly and I'm not sure what needs to be done to avoid.
Today it stalled out entirely.

When starting up, the engine takes a couple seconds to turn over. When driving, the car won't accelerate beyond ten or fifteen MPH.

Yesterday, that effected only lasted for a couple blocks, but today, it was worse. First I just took it straight out, but quickly realized something was wrong, so I went back home, but after waiting for several minutes, it was still bad and the vehicle stalled out.

It started back up after a few minutes of trying and waiting. It ran pretty smoothly back to my house.

Right now it's starting up alright, still stalled out a couple times, but I've taken it around the block a couple times and it seems fine.

I'm not sure if it was just cold and I jumped the gun trying to take it out before it was ready, or something else.

The car was a bit low on coolant when I checked it, added more pure antifreeze, oil levels looked fine. I had quite a few codes, but only one persistent one, p1675. Some of them did look relevant, like an heated O2 one.

List all the codes first. Otherwise, we could spend weeks just guessing, and that's what we try to avoid doing here.

p0113
p0135
p0502
p0502
p0740
p0753
p0758
p1406
p1655
p1675

Holy shit balls, that's a list.

I'm going to suggest clearing them all first, then restart the engine and see which ones come back first. I'm thinking they all will.

Might as well start inspecting the entire engine/trans harness now.

Did that already, the only one that came back was the p1675.

Is it cranking over slowly like as if the battery is dying? If so, remove the battery connections, check for the white corrosion, clean and reconnect. You will have to remove the black and red boots to access the actual connections.

No, it doesn't seem slow.

And now it won't turn over at all.

How old is the battery? Did you check the connections?

The battery is a couple years old, connections were pretty wore out, couldn't even take off the red battery cable because hex head didn't fit an 8mm wrench anymore.

A friend stopped by and we did find something wrong with the ignition system. The spark plugs would spark once then do nothing.

Fix the electrical issues first.

Okay, so I cleaned off as much of the white corrosion as I could, and a similar thing happened to when I changed the air filter. It ran for a few minutes and died.

Check for codes

Alright, so I've checked the codes again and I've got
p0113
p0750
p0753
p0758
p1655
p1675

The vehicle seems to have gotten more predictable after cleaning the battery.

It will die after about ten to fifteen minutes of idling and then won't start again for another thirty minutes or so, which it will do very quickly.
This pattern has repeated itself three times so far.

You have an electrical issue somewhere. Seems like something has eaten your harness or you have ground issues somewhere.

Okay, so that would help explain why it happened when it got cold, I suppose.

So I've purchased a spark plug tester to test the ignition system. What other systems are there?

I really need a little more direction. Other than hoping it's a bad spark plug cable, I'm not sure what else to look for.

A bad spark plug cable will not cause all of those codes. You need to visually inspect the PCM harness to each of those components listed in those P codes you posted.

Okay just the harness leading to the two shift solenoids, the Evap purge solenoid, the TCC solenoid and the Evap Vent solenoid?

Alright, thanks, this is a lot of stuff to track. Really can't do anything about it til Sunday due to work.

So where can I find where all this stuff is located and where all the wiring to it?
How obvious is what I'm looking for?

How obvious is what

I would take the battery in to your local parts store and have them load test it. There will be no charge for this. The symptoms you are describing and all the codes it is throwing is telling me something fundamental with the electric system has failed. Mike is right in that it might be a wiring issue, but since checking the battery is free you should start there.

Okay, wasn't the battery.

Two questions:

They said it might be my alternator, and that they could test it. Is that worth a shot?

Also what is the type of of bolt that secures the battery clamp? It fell in the dark, and I can't find it.

By all means, have them check the alternator.

Not sure on the bolt. Is it one that holds a small plastic wedge down at the bottom of the battery, or one that comes up and over the battery?

The first one, the one that holds the plastic wedge down?
That makes it the GM long body bolt right? 13mmx65mm M8?