Comment by lubujackson

Back when I was a severely cheap and short-sighted college student I drove a beater Chevy Corsica that had a recurring problem: it would stall if I stopped the car.

Now I could start the car fine, usually. But after driving for a few minutes, if I came to a stop the car would stutter, lurch and stall. I would then restart the car with a bit more effort and continue to the next stop, where the problem got worse and it would take longer and longer to get the car restarted. But eventually the car WOULD restart and I would continue on.

It was the perfect confluence of conditions to promote all kinds of stupid behavior. I always said, "I'm not driving again until I get this fixed" and two days later saying, "wellll, I can make it to the supermarket before it stalls!"

This went on for MONTHS, with the overall problem getting steadily worse. I could feel the car fighting to stay running as I slowed down. I became a master of giving myself a huge lead up to red lights and slowwwwly lurching up to them, desperately hoping the light would turn. One time I took a rolling right turn at a red, did a u-turn, took another right and kept going. One time I stalled at a tollbooth for 10 minutes. Like I said, I was an idiot.

I was certain this was going to be some tragic $1000 repair that I could ill-afford. When I finally brought the car in, the mechanic could find nothing wrong - except my air filter was exceptionally dirty. The car had simply been choked to death and needed more and more WIND to provide oxygen for combustion.