I have a 94 celica that I got for free and have been DD-ing for the past couple of months, but recently I've had intermittent stalling problems. The car has stalled out twice on the highway and once 2 blocks from my house. The car will be driving fine and then out of nowhere the engine will have stalled or when i'm the highway the rpms will buck dropping from 2800ish to 0 and back up several times. Any thoughts of what this could be, or rather the most likely culprit?
I'd tend to start with something simple like the fuel filter. I've had a clogged filter cause similar problems.
Check the ignition system as well - if you have something in there like an ignition amplifier, they can get hot and start to fail intermittently as they get older.
Alright sounds good I picked up a fuel filter yesterday, hopefully it'll be an easy fix like that 
Between work and being sick I hope I can get it on sometime this week
helped a friend out with a slightly older celica... was a fuel issue...
Your original post implies the tach drops to zero while driving. That sounds like the engine is still turning along with the wheels, but the ignition system is not creating a pulse to drive the tach.
If so, you've lost the ignition pickup or amplifier. Fuel delivery problems won't make the tach drop.
So i've been putting off solving this problem and it did get more predictable. The car stalls while driving and moving after ~15 minutes of driving. The car's rpm's will drop to 0 while driving whether it be from a stop or cruising at 50mph.
I replaced the fuel pump relay and the fuel filter but no dice.
Streetwiseguy: For ignition pickup, would it make sense to just get a new distributor instead of fiddling around with the cap/rotor/ and pickup? Also, could it be the coolant temperature sensor. This problem only occurs while the car is warm, but if its unlikely to be a fuel issue should i not bother trying the coolant temperature sensor?
In reply to lnlds:
Good used, yes. Aftermarket rebuild, unless you are looking for something to practice your skeet shooting, are pretty much universally junk. Ignitioon modules are one thing I tend to buy OEM. The quality/longevity is not there in jobber parts.
One of the tricks I learned working on old Saabs was that if you suspect an ignition module after a certain amount of time (and therefore heat) was to let it run until it starts acting up and then pour a huge glass of ice water on the module. If the problem clears up when the module is cooled back down, that's your problem.
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