The Mrs and I bought ourselves a 1990 galant as a cheap runabout. Only problem is that it uses almost as much fuel as the VR4! It has a new air filter, oil & filter, fuel filter and spark plugs, and the auto trans has been serviced by mitsi in the last couple of weeks.
Considering its an 1800 and I don't really thrash it (the whole point in having it was to save gas, as she lives in Henderson and I live in Papatoetoe) I don't think it should be using this much.
It has this random problem where it stalls when you take off from a stand still. We got mitsi to look at it, and they said there's a problem with the ECU, it is not reading the output from the idle sensor. They tested the sensor and the wiring and its all good. It was going to cost $600 for a second hand ECU, $800 for a new one, or $350 for someone to come and look at the other one. As we'd spent $300 odd dollars on it already we flagged it at that point, and decided to see if the trans flush helped things at all.
It is running heaps better, and seems a lot happier to drive (if that makes sense lol) but the fuel usage is still not fantastic.
Could the idle sensor issue be causing this? The Mrs wants to sell it as I might as well be driving the VR4, but I want to make sure we do everything to check out the issue first, as we paid $750 for it and it has done less than 130000km, and is in pretty good nick apart from this!