Hi all, looking for some advice regarding my 03 plate Astra Bertone 2.2. Sorry in advance for the long post.
Just before Christmas I returned from a three day business trip, picked up the car from Manchester airport and started driving home. Car seemed fine at first then after ten mins of driving I came to a set of traffic lights and the car violently shook and stalled, managed to get it started again by turning the key and pumping the accelerator (most violent car start ever!). The car cut out again at when I hit traffic 5 mins later and the EML light came on, managed to get home by keeping revs above 1k when stationary.
When I got home I disconnected the cable from the EGR and the problem seemed to get better, the idle was still a bit jumpy and lower than usual at 550-600 revs, however it wasn't stalling or juddering as if about to stall. I took the car to a local garage as I needed new tyres fitting anyway and they put a Tech2 on the car, the only code that came up was the EGR valve so the guy cleared the codes and when I went back a couple of days later he checked again with the Tech2 and the only code that came back was the EGR valve.
Today I changed the spark plugs and fitted the blanking plate & cheater, before today the car had more or less settled down since disconnecting the EGR cable and was running almost as usual (which is why i've left it so long). Fired it up after fitting plugs, plate & cheater and car is running terrible again! It's not cutting out like before Christmas but almost, the revs are bouncing up and down slowly between 750 and 500 with an intermittent rythmic rumble, also the EML is still lit up but i've fitted the cheater as shown on here.
I had the garage check the exhaust manifold for cracks and they said it was fine, the guy seemed certain too that the problems i'm encountering wouldn't be anything to do with the coilpack (although i've read a few posts on here that might disagree with that). Apart from idling badly the car is fine, a few other things i've notied are that when it's idling the dash lights go dim every few seconds in time with the revs dropping although this is maybe because it's about to stall? The console where Range, Instant Consumption etc are shown has some segements not lit up, every time I get in the car it's a different part not illuminated and the ones playing up before are working again, also the blowers don't seem to have any power, on full blast the noise is there but really weak as though it blocked/disconnected somewhere. All of these problems have come on since I left the car sat for three days, before then it was great, never had one problem with it.
I'm not an expert so wondering if these symptons state something obvious to anyone on here, would you recommend bending over and taking it to VX and getting a diagnostics done? Is there something that would trigger the EML but not produce a code?
Thanks in advance for any advice and sorry for the monster post
Matt