Here's the story, It will start and run fine and then all the sudden it will stumble, like it's loseing power, but since it's moving the clutch will kick it back on sometimes. But when just dies, you can start it back up like that.

Last friday I was driving and it just died on me, wouldn't start at all for me. So I had it towed to a shop (I'm not in a place where I can work on it myself right now) and they concluded the battery was done for. So I replaced the battery with a yellow top optima, which is what I had in it before. Well then it started doing what I said above, so I took it back to the shop. As I was leaving the shop, was going to drop it off the next day, my ignition module shorted out and I had smoke coming out of the steering column. So that got fixed and I picked it up and then it did the stumble thing 3 times and died once on the way home, like 2 miles. And it seems to only happen at lower RPM's, like under 1.5K. Once you get it over that, it runs fine and you can drive forever. And you can let it idle and it will idle forever, I'm so lost on this one guys. And it doesn't throw any SES lights.

Thanks for any help guys, I need some good luck bad!

 

Does the stumbling usually happen during acceleration? It sounds like it could be a leaking or stuck open EGR.

 

well that doesn't sound like a fun problem at all. i'm kind of leaning toward where slvr is going...but then again, wouldn't the egr throw the ses light? (thinking out loud)

 

That's what I was thinking wham, but I'll tell my mechanic, he's supposed to call me this morning when he gets in. I'll tell him that he might want to check that out. I'm hoping it's something little and easily fixed like that.

 

Do Camaro's have a Crank Position Sensor. I had a Sebring that would die randomly and I was able to start it back up immediately and no code was ever thrown. It ended up being a Crank Position Sensor.

Just a thought.

 

could the SES bulb be burned out? just a thought. could be throwing a code and you don't know it. try unplugging something and see if it comes on.

 

Or he could just turn the key to ON, and see if it lights up when all the others do during the little "test".

 

Yeah, the SES light works, comes on with the ignition, first thing I checked. I was thinking about the crank sensor, there is one right, or is it just the optical sensor? The shop had it all day, put about 30 miles on it and never got it to act up. I went by there after work and drove and nothing until I pulled back into the place and then it died. This really pisses me off.

 

Ok, here's the deal now. I picked it up tonight because the shop still couldn't get it to act up right. But I messed with it and a friend and I took to a parking lot to see if we could figure it out. Well we were first gear just swerving and figured out that with the tilt lowered all the way and when the steering wheel is about almost all the way turned to the left, sometimes the right, but not very much, it will cut out then. After doing this for about 5 mins I got smoke out of the steering column again. I think the ignition module again. So I'm going to drop it off and let them know about all this, but what do you guys think? I haven't even messed around with the wireing in the steering column so I'm not familiar with it. But is there a wire or wire harness that could be rubbing or getting pulled by the steering column? Either way, I'll post up what was found out and if there was a fix.

 

Well letting the magic smoke out of your steering column electronics probably isn't helping! I suppose you could have a massive short or you may be tripping something related to the VATS system. If it only happens when the steering wheel is in one position it sounds like a bad wiring job to me.

Oh, and to answer some other random questions: The SES light will only trip if it detects the EGR isn't working. This doens't mean that you'll trip a code for an EGR that's leaking a "little" (aka enough to throw off the mixture and make the car run weird). I won't go into the tecnical details of how the car detects how the EGR is operating correctly unless specifically requested, but I will say the computer won't be able to determine a little leak like that.
As far as crank sensors, the LT1 determines the position of the crank and cam from the Low-Res and Hi-Res sensors in the opti.