Last winter we had some work done including replacement of a snapped abs brake cable. The problems we're having came up right after that work was done. The car will, at times which seem unpredictable idle poorly, or just stall, resist use of the accelerator and possibly slow down to where I have to engage the clutch and it will then die. Stopping for a minute usually allows it to run ok again. We notice an odor at those times which my current mechanic says is fuel burning in the catalytic converter because something is causing the fuel to not burn properly. The car's got 166K on it.

So I went to another mechanic who did a tune up but found no ignition system problem. After getting the car back from him and eventually experiencing this problem again we went to yet another mechanic who's replaced the oxygen sensor, the air pump and most recently a valve he said was part of the air pump system. He said the pump and valve when removed and bench tested were not working.

The car still does the same thing. Now my mechanic gives up saying he doesn't know what else to do.

FWIW we had this mechanic most recently also change the front rotors and pads. Our old mechanic turned the rotors which caused vibrating. This mechanic says rotors should never be turned and replacement did fix the problem. However now I notice the abs engaging at times when coming to a slow controlled stop; which made me think of the abs cable that was replaced back when this whole thing started. Also the abs and trac lights sometimes are on, sometimes are off - which was happening before as well.

Marty Landman