Occasional hard start and studdering
 

I did a boat load of work on my mother in law's 850 this past summer, including a timing belt which probably had 200k. I had her down for the good part of 2 months, working on saturdays.

The car was hard to get running after buttoning everything up, but eventually started and seemed ok with a smooth iidle. Engine sounded really good for 350k. I haven't witnessed it but apparantly it still has hard starting. My father in law couldn't get the car started this morning. It's been raining for days... maybe related. Also the car can stumble at low revs in first. It's a manual. I didn't notice it much when I drove it last weekend, but it's there. If you are stopped and goose the gas, you can get it to stumble between 1-2.5k sometimes.

My thoughts are that she had it in the shop and they fiddled with the ignition timing. It may have been running rough due to a stretched timing belt. I haven't checked that yet. I don't know how old the plugs,wires, cap/rotor is either. I know that before I got to the car, there was pressure in the system due to a very old oil trap. Oil had been leaking very bad at the top from the dipstick seal and the oil cap. Some oil probably got to the distributor. I think it was running ok after I replaced the oil trap and before the timing belt.

I've got no check engine light, but haven't scanned for codes. It comes on briefly to indicate it's working when I start the car.

Ideas?

Do a full tune up! Plugs, plug wires, distributor cap, rotor, air filter and fule filter. Throw in an engine flush and oil change for good measure. Once that is done, it should run a lot better, if not, let us know.

Good luck

Well I went to try and start it today and it was almost impossible to start. I finally got it started but it was misfiring worse than before. If I mash the gas it misses hard at low revs. If I go light on it and rev up all cylinders are firing. The car idles fine. It's misfiring terribly now.. The check engine light started blinking and then stayed on. Definately gonna get the tuneup parts before trying anything else. Hopefully i didn't screw the cat going up the street and back to the driveway.