People,

1987 sunbird gt, non turbo. Orignal owner. EGR valve connected to vacuum line like factory. car runs horribly. Spits/sputters/kicks/buckles, even when reved to around 3500 rpm. I disconnected egr , plugged the vac line, and car runs great, except rough idle. Rough idle is also with egr connected. I have checked for vac leaks with no findings. Any ideas? is this typical with old J cars?

PS: new plugs, IAC, TPS, dist cap, rotor.

Thanks

Spray some carb cleaner into the throttle body and see if the idle is better...

Thanks, Tech. IF it gets smoother what could that mean? (could be a day or so before I try it....)

Or, do you mean that I should clean my TBI with carb cleaner to seee if that would fix the problem? I will try it......

If smoother, you could have a bad injector/ECM, since you found no leak around the throttle body.......

Old trick was to attach a timing light to car and shine it on cone of fuel coming out of the injector in the throttle body.....If instead of a fine mist, you saw droplets, it usually was an ECM.....

Wow- good to know, Tech. Cant wait to try this........

Sprayed carb cleaner in the TBI, and engine slowed down a bit, at one point almost stalled, probably because I sprayed too much. All I noticed was slower rpm'*. Very difficult to tell if engine was smoother or not. To me, inconclusive. Guess Im out of options for now. FI is not the original, and when I replaced it years ago it did not make any difference in the rough idle. The old one was still good.

I wonder if it isn't the EGR valve stuck open . . . ?

Well, its the 2nd NEW EGR I bought, and the car behaves the same way. I should have mentioned that with EGR disconnected when I floor the pedal and accelerate, reaching say, 5000 rpm the car flies! No sputtter, or anything. Its like it doesnt matter.

To summarize:

1) EGR disconnected, rough idle , but no hesitation/rough engine when pedal floored/accelerate
2) EGR connected, rough idle, terrible running car, awful / spitting/stumbling acceleration.

What the heck is going on??????

Ah, didn't know you had already replaced the EGR.

This sounds like massive intake air leak of some sort.