Pontiac Repair: 94 grand am, mass air flow sensor, mass air flow

Question
todd i have a 94 grand am 3.1 engine (100,000 mi)AutoTrans.car cranks & runs fine, till you shift into gear-any gear! had repair work done,mechanic said it was a bad connection in a wire near starter(?)i drove it 30 miles then same thing happened. no matter how long it runs, put it in gear and it dies. it had been sluggish on takeoff for a while- i'd manually shift the gears for better performance. i dont know where to start. any ideas?

Answer
Hi there:

well what happened sounds logical with a bad connection by the starter. The ground wires for the engine computer are at the starter. so any change in the harness movement when the engine moves wehn the car is put in gaer could cause this. I would look there first there are 3 or 4 ground wires on the engine in that area. Another thing to look at is possibly fule pressure if for some reason the fuel pump is starting to go it could #1 be sluggish and #2 and change in load on the engine can make is stal if it's already low on fuel pressure. One last thing could be a bad/dirty mass air flow sensor that is the major input to the engine computer to measure the amount of load on the engine. that is where I would start looking first. good luck :-)