I have a 00 EM1 and just changed the clutch, prior to that my car ran perfectly. I started it up last night and it started acting really funny. Engine light would flicker and the car would sound like it was missing and want to stall, then it would fix itself and idle perfectly for a few seconds, then start acting up again....back and forth..etc.

I took the car for a test drive today and it started missing again, tach and spedo started jumping all over the place...the farther I drove the worse it got. I pulled over and the car stalled. When I re-started the car I could hear a relay flickering like crazy, it's located above the ECU beside the glove box. When the car idled ok, it stopped flickering, then it would flicker, the car would stumble and missfire and the engine light would come on. Eventually the car just got so bad I couldn't drive it on the highway and coasted off. I pulled the VSS plug off and the car started right up and I was able to drive it home with very little "missing" and acting up. The engine light was on again and when I checked the code it came up as 17 VSS which wasn't a big surprise since it was unpluged.

Would a VSS cause the car to run so poorly? Everything else on the car wasn't touched ans was connected, nothing loose.

 

bump having similar problems

 

i had a bad vss and had no problems like this. I did however have similar problems with RPM/Speedo juming and it turned out i had a loose ground and as the engine RPMs climbed so did the speedo/temp guage etc... If u just did work, make sure all grounds are good, esp the trans one, that was the one i had trouble with.

 

Found the problem. The main ground on the thermostat housing was loose, tightened it and it works perfectly now. I never loosened it either when I did the clutch so I'm not sure how it got that way...weird.

The main tip off that it was probably a grounding issue was the fact that my main relay was ticking like crazy when there was a problem. That means either a ground or a power supply problem. The relay flipping on and off was sending power on and off to my ecu causing the car to bounce between on and off.

 

wow my knowledge amazes me sometimes jk...

glad u found it