My daughter has a 97 Saturn SC2 with a fairly fresh tune up on it. The motor seems to be missing a lot at an idle and when cruising. When your driving steady at any speed the motor missing enough to dang near shake the car. Then when you give it some gas it takes a few seconds and the motor runs smooth while accelerating. The problem started about three months after the tune up and it seems to be getting worse. Any idea's? Weak coil pack? computer problem?

Check the plug wires.

Plug wires range from 3 to 5K. They should be ok.

Who did the tune-up. If it was a shop you paid money to then take it back. We seem to have a lot of this kind of problem where nobody wants to hold the person they paid to work on their car responsible.

If all your tune-up is was changing the plugs and oil then something was disconnected and not re-connected properly. A '97 is new enough that an odbII scanner should be hooked up and used to diag the car... Throwing parts at guesses will cost more in the long run than paying a mechanic to go over the car...

And yes, there are POS, SOB's out there that do this kinda crap and laugh about it after we pay and drive off!

You know, as well loosen nuts and bolts, switch out new headlight bulbs for dead ones, etc, etc...

Bad, Bad, bad!!

pdq67

If you paid for a tune up, take it back. If not, run to the local Advance Auto Parts and run a diagnostic on it maybe. Ofcourse there are many things you can do before this but the diagnostic they offer is free of charge to use. Just plugs in to the port and that should give you a sign of what might be giving the car problems.

I took the car to a trusted mechanic. He check the throttle body, the fuel injectors and temporarily replaced the plugs, plug wires, coils and the coil module and the motor still stutters. It's just the number 3 cylinder that misses when not under a acceleration. He thinks the ECM is going bad. Anybody know where these are located on the car? I need to get some numbers off of it to get another.

Don't just change the ECM until you get it scanned correctly. Are you getting any codes? Are you sure it's just number 3 and not something like the EGR valve?

I forgot to mention eariler that the mechanic did replace the EGR because that was one of the codes that came up. He said nothing about any other codes. The number 3 is the only one with the problem.