Does the car start strong or sputter for a few seconds then livens up. The misty white smoke and struggle to get up to speed almost sounds like a head gasket failure (had it happen on my car with a very small pinhole leak. She would start like shit but once warmed up it would be good) Take your cool...

Check oil and coolant on it. Coolant empty is fine but milky oil is not. Sometimes people leave engine running post crash and you end up with a cooled engine.

I decided to rebuild the throttle spring on my 98 v70 as they seized up while in storage up north. It seems that rust can build up on the rotating shaft where the throttle cable links to the throttle assembly. This rust can bind up the shaft and lead to a sticky throttle. There is a spring on this r...

A bad cam position sensor can prevent starts and cause stalls i believe. Alsobad vacuum lines on the intake manifold (check passenger side of it) which can cause the car to stall out. A fuel pump that has gone bad will have no pressure at the regulator (had a 99 T5 do this to me the other day). I wo...

If you have a code scanner then check the engine parameters at the time of the stall. I believe the 98's can store freeze frame data so see when the misfires/other codes are triggered. Check for a broken engine air intake. The heat cycling slowly destroys these and that can lead to weird stallout be...

Thinking back, when i had my ring change my mechanic simply pulled an unlabeled one he had off the shelf. I know he is very well versed in the intricacies of these cars so it would lead me to believe that all these rings are the same. I dont recall it being a big job to change a ring either. I would...

I would say a decision needs to be made if you want to dive into more DIY and fix your car yourself or trust some run of the mill mechanics. I know there are good mechanics out there, but normally you need to develop a pretty good relationship with them before they start really listening to the deta...

Worked on my partners acura. Changed a caliper and tried to bleed the system. Snapped off a bleeder screw on the front caliper but it was in the locked position. May change the caliper later if i cannot extract the screw. Used one of those mitivacs to bleed the brakes and it was super easy. Planning...

Thank you for confirming this! I am tempted to add the aux switch and a second switch for keeping the lights on. Will splice a line into the ground for the aux power line and connect it to a high power relay. That way power can be selected between the two switches. Will draw it later.

Alternator electrics are usually a diode bridge with a regulator if i recall correctly. If you can post some pictures of the part then we can make a better determination of what failed. Excessive current draws can cause regulators to overheat and fail. If the battery is fine then I would check the a...