have been having a bit of trouble with the car lately. she will start up well and drive as normal but sometimes at a set of lights or stop sign will start to idle rough. putting it into park and giving a few revs it bogs down a bit and i see some black smoke come out,then she will rev up and all is good for awhile. any ideas on what to check first? thanks.
When was the last time the car got new coils? Sounds like you’re due.
Get an OBD2 reader and tell me what your long term fuel trims are. You may have a vacuum leak?
hi, only had the car about a year so not sure on the coils. is there a way of checking them?
have been looking around other posts with the same problem. a few said it was the cts (coolant temp. sensor). i read one person took the plug off the sensor, put a looped wire in the plug as to fool the system so to speak and the car ran good. what i want to know is this ok to do and take the car for a good run with the plug off and a piece of wire inserted to see if it works or would this upset anything else.
Probably check for a misfire code? LTFT seems like a good thing to check. I don’t know how to best check a CTS but if you can measure it’s operating temp. resistance, you can substitute this when the engine is hot and see if the fault keeps appearing, lots of effort though… Should you conclude that the CTS is a worthy contestant it might be cheap enough to simply replace. Or does the system exclude lambda feedback at idle and then screws up the mixture?
hi, have no way of checking for codes, do not have a code reader.
Get one, they are very cheap, or go to any shop and they’ll be happy to do it for a few bucks 
yep, will have to look into getting one.
Autozone, Advance Auto and Pep Boys etc will scan the car for nothing, any day, because they want to sell you the parts to fix whatever code comes up.
Shorting out the CTS is fine and safe to do.
You really should spend the $15 and get an OBD2 reader for pulling codes.
It would be much better if you paid $10 for an ELM27 wireless reader, and a phone app, so you can not only read your codes, but analyze data. I have an iPhone and I use OBD Fusion, however if I had an Android phone, I would use Torque. iPhones need a Wifi OBD2 wireless reader, whereas, I believe, Android can use Bluetooth or Wifi.
Spend the $100 on a tool that will help you troubleshoot and solve problems, not only for this car, but for every car since 1996!
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hi, a bit too far to travel from western australia. 