Hello everyone,

I have a 1996 3.1L V6 Monte Carlo. I bought it about 3 years ago with ~150k miles on it after my 97 Oldsmobile CutlassSupreme died.

I've been very satisfied with the car so far. It's the smoothest riding car I've ever had, but I'm starting to suspect that there may be something wrong with it. I don't know much about cars, so I figured maybe I could seek some advice here.

The car is now at about 182k miles, and I just changed the oil today. Lately, it's done about 3 things that I find alarming:

1. While on the highway, the car randomly sort of "stutters", if you know what I mean. Usually, this happens if I get it up to about 60-70 mph. If I take my foot off the accelerator for a moment and step on it again, this usually makes it stop.

2. After the cold winter months started rolling around, I noticed that the car makes an odd sort of ticking/rattling noise. The frequency of this noise seems to be in time with the strokes of the engine, so if I hit the gas it gets faster. Usually, this goes away after about 10-20 minutes of driving. It tends to only happen if I haven't driven it in the past 24 hours.

3. About two months ago, there was an incident where my wiper blades starting moving without me activating them. They seemed to struggle to move and a thin wisp of smoke came out of my steering column. I managed to get it to stop and drive it home. Nothing like that has happened since. An electrical technician suggested that it may be a bad circuit assembly, but I do not have the funds to deal with that right now, being a college student, so I am forced to ignore it and focus on whatever mechanical/tranny issue I might have right now.

My main priority is to at least keep the car alive until July, at which point I will have graduated and started employment at my new job; by then, I should be able to afford to replace it if necessary.

I suspect that I should probably flush the transmission fluid. I do not know when the last time it was that it has been done, but I do know that I've driven the vehicle about 32000 miles since I bought it and should start thinking about doing that regardless, given the age of the car.

I was wondering if anyone had any experiences like this, or might know how to tackle this problem, at least to keep the car going for a couple more months. I haven't had a single real problem with my Monte Carlo in the 3 years I've owned it up until now, and the car still starts and runs just fine. I just suspect that I should do some preventative maintenance on it before the signs I'm noticing become actual problems.

Also, having this problem has taught me that I probably really should start teaching myself more about cars so I can do a better job at maintaining them. If anyone can point me to any resources that I can check out to learn more just in general about how cars and their subsystems work and basic troubleshooting, I'd be very grateful.

Glad to join you all on the forums =)
-Evan W.

 

First off welcome to the site Evan
1 Could be some type of transmission issue i'm not real sure about this one.
2 Sounds like a lifter tick. Could be caused by a stuck lifter or a bit of wear in the engine. Also low oil could make the sound louder. It probably isn't very serious and a lot of GM vehicles do it.

3 Sounds like a bad mulitfunction switch.

 

Hello lougreen,

Thanks for your reply and warm welcome. I just had the transmission serviced today with new fluid, and the oil was changed yesterday. I think that sorted everything out.

So far, no stuttering, and I haven't heard any ticking or rattling since the oil change, so that hopefully will sort it out for the time being.

Thanks again,
-Evan W.

 

Glad it's working out for you so far.

 

1. there was another member with a similar issue and we never really got to the bottom of the issue. Like lou said possibly a transmissions issue.

2. i really wouldn't worry too much about the noise, my car does the same thing when its cold and i believe theres other 3100s that do it too. One thing you could try that was reccomended by another member is try some motor honey. And see if that quiets the issue.

If you do decide to have the transmissions fluid changed make sure its a drop pan fluid change only, no complete flushes. Assuming you're going to take it to a garage make it clear to them you want them to do a drop pan/filter change. This will change out a good portion of the fluid but not all of it. Many members here reccomend this method over complete flushes.