ok i have a 92 lude with a h22 swap. just drove car about 300 miles. car ran perfect. got off the freeway to my destiantion and rpm just started jumping up and down with a sputter sound coming out of exhaust. engine died but starts back up. motor seems to be running fine. some one please help. it only seems to do it when idling. has anyone expierenced this before? how can i fix this. i am out of town and need to get this fixed asap. please help.

 

Is it a consistent up and down surging? What range of rpm's? Does it do it all the time when idling now, but never did before? Idle surges can be caused by numerous things including vacuum leak, bad FITV or IACV, or air in the cooling system to name a few. Not sure what happened to the thread on here about idle surges ("the end of all idle surge problems..."); it was pretty exhaustive and informative. Please give us more details so we can help you better.

 

If the rpm needle is acting sporadic, and the car is sputtering...that could very well be a spark issue, likely the coil going bad.

Starts off like what he explained, getting worse over time until eventually the car won't start anymore. I've had this happen on 2 different cars...was the coil on both.

 

well the idle is not surging at all. just the rpm guage is jumping up and down. there is no changes in the idle. a bad sputter sound from exhaust at idle. then it will die. but will crank back up. distrubutor was loose but i tightend it. problem still occurs. engine seems to run fine except on idle. just sputters on idle then will eventually die if i let idle. problem just started occuring. it has never done this before. just changed out the main relay with a junkard part but im not sure thats it. the rpm will jump up and down while driving too but no change in the idle or performance. engine seems to run and sound fine. the ranges of rpm are 1000 to 4000 completely eratic.

 

It sounds like the ignitor is defective.