NickRz

My daily driver, a 96 civic, has suddenly started having a major problem. It has been running fine for years, then last week I had to have a state inspection done. As far as I know, all they did to my cars was replace the headlights and a tire, and scrape warped tint off the rear windshield. It ran fine for 2 days after I got it back. I headed off to work, and my car was making rattling noises from under the hood, and the rpms plummeted anytime I hit the clutch or put the transmission in neutral. When this happened, both the battery and oil lights came on. I knew I might not make it to work like that and turned around, and it got worse very quickly. It got to the point where the engine would die as soon as I hit the clutch to change gears and I was only able to keep driving by popping the clutch to restart it every time I changed. Eventually I reached a red light half a mile from home, and I could not get it moving from a complete stop, so I pushed it into a parking lot. The car was perfect until this morning, now it's dead. It's at about 250K miles, pretty worn out, and expensive repairs would mean junking the car. Any ideas what's wrong? Any chance it's an inexpensive fix? I don't want to be a bus commuter.

Note: I had the state inspection repairs done at Firestone. They destroyed my rear defogger removing the damaged tint, so I wouldn't put it past them to have done something really stupid that trashed my car.

haroldrussi

on mine when it did this I completed a complete tune up with plugs, rotor cap wires and coil. Then the ignitor went out last night. They all draw on each other and can weaken the others when they go out.