trouble in paradise, Car stalling, ALL OPINIONS WELCOME Options

[siuformula]

"Little Black" started to misbehave. when i backed out of the driveway, she died, it was early so i just assumed i let the clutch go too fast. i tried to restart the car and nothing happened . Here is what i found after some extensive spark plug pulling. The plugs were shot and corroded. so i replaced them. the car started fine after the new plugs were in. but when i accelerate the car started to stall out between 1000 and 2200 rpm. foot to the floor and nothing!!! i could get up to the higher rpm range and she did just fine. there sounded like a misfire at idle. At this point i decided it was time to change the fuel filter with my thoughts being that there was a fuel delivery problem. the filter was dirty and needed to be replaced but was not the problem. I thought maybe an injector cleaning was in order, that's when i was sure that i found the problem. the entire intake was caked in carbon soot, I've seen chimneys with less soot. everything from the back of the throttle blade to the intake gasket was a thick film of black, 2 days and 1 gallon of mineral spirits later the intake was clean and all of the carbon removed. surely this was part of the problem seing that 2 of the vacuum ports in the TB were blocked. NOPE!!!! After reassembling the freshly refurbed intake and TB the car started and reved great, i removed the car from the lift and took it for a drive, great throttle response, perfect, for about 14 minutes and then the sputter and stalling started again. I could use some opinions here.

[trdproven]

in addition to getting those corrected, do a complete tune up

[Remy]

Try reseting the ECU, what year/model celica is it ?? Any CEL's ??

[siuformula]

She is a '94 st 1.8 7afe. I have not had a single CEL. i know the light works when i put the key to pos 3, so the dash light is not out. i unpluged a number of things while the car was idling and still did not get a CEL. the srs fuse has been removed due to the airbags being gone.

[Remy]

Sometimes the CEL won't come on and your gonna have to jump the terminals in the diag box to find out what the problem is. This is a quote from "alltracman" u can use.

What you can do [while you're waiting for it to do this again] is find your diag box under your hood. Get a SMALL paper clip, you don't want to force the terminals in the box.
Jump TE2 and E1. Note, TE2 isn't a typo. If you don't understand this, do a search for how to check codes. It's the same thing, except to normally check for codes you jump TE1 and E1. You're going to jump TE2 and E1.

AFTER you jump the terminals, turn the key on and drive the car.
Take it for a drive to the mall, whatever, just make sure you get some good time and varied driving. I'd say at least a half hour.

Stop the car, turn the key off, remove the jumper and jump TE1 and E1 and see if you got any codes.
If not, there's not a whole lot you can do at the moment.
If you did, that most likely gave you an idea of the problem circuit.

^^^ Thats how I found out my map sensor was bad my CEL didn't come on but with that it worked hope it helps.

[siuformula]

thanks for the reply.
I think i know what you mean by jumping the terminal. how will this tell me what is wrong though?
over the past week i have narrowed down what it it not
New spark plugs.
New fuel filter.
Fuel pump works just fine.
Entire intake was removed, cleaned and checked for leaks
Throttle body was cleaned

I tood the distributor cap off today and saw that the rotor was badly pitted and slighly corroded. i cleaned the rotor and the 4 points to remove corrosion.

It seems to stall more when the car is up to temp, and it only stalls coming off idle, once i reach 1500 it will rev with great response.
What would cause a car to loose the ability to rev at low rpm but not at high rpm?

[GriffGirl]

A vacuum leak could cause that, among other things.

Replace your dist cap and rotor, don't just clean them. Also, are you POSITIVE that your spark plug wires are on in the right order? A misfire and loss of power can also be caused by having the wires on incorrectly. It's really sounding more and more like you just need to complete your tune-up here. All the fouled plugs, pitted parts, etc point to neglect (not saying it's on your part, but just in general I mean)

Use a bent paper clip to "jump the terminals" - you put each end of the bent paper clip into the terminals where it says above to, and then follow the instructions from there. The terminals will be labeled (I think it's on the underside of the black plastic cover for the diagnostics terminal thingie) so you can ensure you're jumping the correct terminals.

[siuformula]

the hessitation and sputter is only intermittent, It is not all of the time. wheather the car is under load or not the car will stall out. but rarely stalls to the point that the engine dies. I can't imagine the plug wired being on wrong due to the fact that they have never been removed from the dist cap and the car revs to redline once i get past the hessitation at 1200- 1500 rpm

[siuformula]

I replaced the ignition coil today and that seem to have fixed the problem. It also makes sense. coming off of idle the ALT is not making full power and has a hard time supplying juice to the make spark. as the engine heated up the coil gets warm and changes resistance thus making the spark weaker than what is required, hence the stalling out. Hopefully this can help someone else in the future.

Symptoms
car stalling at operating temp and only coming off idle
car revs to redline and maintains throttle response in the upper rpm range
Poor idle

Problem
Ignition coil going bad/ overheating

Fix
New ignition coil, Dist cap, rotor buttom $80.20 @ Advance Auto

7afe 134,000 miles