Hey guys, my girl has a 1998 Chevrolet Camaro 3.8L, I’m a advanced technician and work on my own projects and took hers up as one, we’ve been fighting a cooling issue the past year and finally got it fixed, we drove it around as a test drive for street sweeping days to move it and drove normal, a few days ago her mom decides to borrow the car and was all fine and she said the car didn’t have any issues, she said she got gas because it was low and put 89 instead of 87, I know some cars are picky but I don’t think 89 would be an issue as I put 91 in my 05 Mustang and it takes 87. Anyways she parked it and no problem, I went to move it a day or two after she last drove it and started it and well.. wtf her mom installed cams! Just kidding but the v6 sounded like an absolute aggressive beast, had a very choppy lope but it wouldn’t even idle, it just revs straight up to 3k then comes down and tries to idle but dies, try to start it again and gave it gas hoping it would fix itself and no luck, just died again, I then put my foot on the brake to notice it feels like the brake booster went out as the pedal is like a wall, won’t even push in a little until I actually put it in gear then it’ll get soft like normal, but once it’s in gear and I drive it a few feet and put it in park, it’ll idle but bad and still has the choppy loud idle like it’s misfiring heavily or dumping excess fuel, the only thing me and her have done since we got it for the two years she owned it was all brand new cooling system including the temp switch. So that being said the intake box did have to be removed but double check and all was good? Any help would be appreciated, to sum it up, was driving and idling normal for months then all of a sudden one day immediately on startup felt like absolute dog poop

 

did you get a check engine light? look to see if brake boost vacuum line is hooked up and not leaking. first thing I would do is take fuel filter out and check for water, may as well change it as well. next check fuel pressure.

 

What Craby said, you may want to tap the MAF sensor lightly with the handle of a screw driver and wiggle the harness leading to the MAF sensor. If either change the way the engine sound then replace as needed. If there is no change unplug the MAF and see if the car runs better.