I just bought (Feb) my 91 Stealth ES (3.0 24V) I flew to Kansas City, MO to pick it up and drove it home to Indiana. The car ran great for the whole trip, and the first couple of weeks following that. But over the last month it has developed a miss (sort of) it is almost like the car is flooding out at anything over lets say 1/2 throttle probably truly less than half. When in 1st gear if I eas into the throttle I can go full throttle with no miss hit 2nd and it will go with out missing hit 3rd and the miss comes back until RPM's are up. Now if I am out on the highway and want to pass and drop into 4th gear and nail it I almost go backwards it misses soo bad. Or say I am holding at 2000 RPM in first gear and then nail it, it misses like crazy untill I hit about 4500 RPM's.

As for add ons, it has a K&N filter (Oval shapped) and a Manifold back 2 1/2" exhaust no cat and a stupid ricer muffler.

I have tried to run all grades of gas with no change at all. I have ran some Lucas injector cleaner throught it to no avail also.

I do not know much if any history on this car other than some (idiot) tried to put hood pins in the upper corners and ruined the hood. SO that in itself kinda scares me about how this car was taken care of. I am leaning towards plugs and wires but I was just curious if this was a known issue that someone may have the answer for?

Thanks so much for any replies, and any help in my journey with this awesome machine!

 

The first thing I would do, would be to change the plugs and wires. Use the factory specified plugs NGK platinum (they are about 10 bucks a piece) and a new set of plug wires. 60 to 100 bucks depending upon brand. The front 3 plugs are a piece of cake, the rear three can be a bitch the 1st time you do it. Going from memory here, so bear with me. There are 7 bolts and 2 nuts on top of the plenum, 3 on the back side. 2 wiring harnesses on the driver side and the throttle cable (2 bolts) on the plenum. Remove the air intake pipe from the plenum and the wiring harnesses on the passenger side (2 bolts to remove the harness bracket) That should free up the plenum so you can lift it off on the intake. Inspect the intake gasket (dealer only item so reuse it if you can or pick one up before you start) then cover the intake holes with a clean rag, wouldn't want to drop a washer down to your pistons, that would be bad news. Then change the rear three plugs.

If that doesn't help, you may need to clean you IAC. If that doesn't help, you could have some bad capacitors on your ECU.

Follow this link to Stealth316.com and do a search for IAC, changing plugs, and ECU caps. He breaks down how to do these things with great pictures and captions. Very awesome site. Good luck, let me know how things turn out.

 

Ok I think I will take your advice and head down that road. It will be about 2 weeks before I have a free weekend to tackle this so once it is done I will let you know if it fixed her up.

Since we are on the subject the car has 140K miles on it and there is no proof as to wether or not the timing belt and such has been done how big of a job is that to do?

Also is it possible to have a "base" Stealth with the 24V DOHC engine in it? I was looking last night and no where on my car does it say ES. But the quarter windows do say 24Valve DOHC and that is infact the motor in the car. Just curious?

Thanks for your help!

Scott

 

It doesn't take much to debadge these cars. I think the only place it would say ES would be on the rear bumper, passenger side. A hair dryer and some elbow grease will pop the emblems right off. I do not think any "base Stealths" came with the DOHC so I would say yours has just been debadged. The timing belt is a pretty big job the first time you do it. You will need a couple special tools in addition to a pretty well stocked tool kit. I think Stealth3/16 goes into that as well. You need to change that belt, if it breaks, it can cause some serious damage to your drivetrain.