my car stalls/goes crazy in the rain. HELP!!

[usebigwords]

hello. first time poster here. i have a 96 golf gl and sometimes it stalls in the rain or when its wet outside. sometimes it wont stall but the check engine light (which is always on) will flash and the car will struggle for a few seconds then go back to normal. this will happen repeatedly, but only when its raining or wet outside.

does anyone know what could be causing this? i dont know much about cars, but i just swapped the router distributor cap. im not sure if it has helped yet.

thanks

[BigTuna]

You would probably have better luck at http://www.vwvortex.com

This is a MKV (2006+) forum.

You probably have an electrical short somewhere.

Also, change you plug wires. If one of them is bad, the rain will cause these issues.

[noog]

Yeah, I'd change my plugs, cables, distribution cap, and rotor

a short term fix may be to spray the cables with something like damp start (not sure if you have that over there)

[deer.eggs]

do you have a cold air intake by any chance? A friend of mine has that same problem... but the air filter on his CAI gets soaked (he isn't running an inner-fender shield...) just a thought.

[GTI_NY]

i bet i know what the problem is, i had a 95 jetta that did the same thing... real sluggish when its wet out, and jerking, thinking it could be a fuel pump issue? mine was a bad O2 sensor in the exhaust, because there was a small leak in my exhaust pipe up near the cat.

[Cosmo]

Checking the code for that flashing CEL might help narrow it down a bit. Otherwise, we're all just guessing and you'll end up randomly throwing parts at it until one fixes it.

If you want to throw parts at it, I would also start with distributor cap/rotor and plug wires. At least those are cheap, and having new ones on a 12 year old car would never hurt even if they aren't the problem.