Hello There,
This is probably an easy question to answer, but being not all that mechanical, I have a problem that might need a more expert answer. I have a 94 GT 5-Speed manual with a little over 156,000, in good to excellent condition, plus amazingly well-preserved (virtually no rust) for never being garage kept in a heavily snowy region during winter. Needless to say, I love this car.
Having another primary car now, the Probe has been off the street for over 2 years. It?s rarely driven, but with stabilized gas in the tank, I run the engine on a regular basis to keep it active. The battery doesn't really have any juice left to crank the engine up on its own, but with a jump, the motor fires right up.
Here?s the problem. Upon initial start up the engine idles fine. But after warming up, and my first rev of the gas pedal, the engine sputters and usually dies unless I can manually pump pedal to keep the idle higher than normal. The car can drive, but again, I have to manually keep the idle high (at least at 2,000 rpms) to ensure it won?t sputter down and die. Needless to say, driving on the street gets pretty tricky.
I replaced the battery last fall, but even with a new one, I get the same sputtering after the engine warms up. Any thoughts on what the problem might be? Could this be the alternator? Or is it something more complicated? Thanks in advance for the comments.