Car Shut Down While Stopped At A Traffic Light. - Corolland: the Toyota Corolla Forums

I have a 1993 Corolla DX, 212k+ miles on it. This will take a bit to explain so bear with me lol. I was driving down the road, and I was stopped at a light, when I noticed a puff of dark smoke come up from under the hood, smelled burning oil briefly,then it just disappeared. About an hour later, I was driving home (the car was shut down for that time) and stopped at a light again, when the car just shut off completely. I started it, and it did it again. I had to put it in neutral, and rev the engine a bit to keep it running. The car idles very rough. After sitting overnight, I restarted it and it does run, but idles very rough still. I do have a cracked manifold the crack goes all around the manifold. could this cause this issue? I bought the car used off an older lady who it turns out got kind of taken by a mechanic who sold her the car. (I do have the manifold to replace it, bought it last night).

Cracked exhaust manifold on that generation is pretty common. That could explain some smoking, but likely not the primary source of your issue. Puff of smoke could also be completely unrelated to the issue at hand. Could be any number of possible causes. Will have to do some additional diagnostic work to narrow down the possible culprits.

Did you pull the sparkplugs and see what they looked like? This generation has an EGR system that can cause a lot of the issues you are seeing, if it losing vacuum, modulator is bad, or the EGR tube is choked with carbon. If the vacuum lines are damaged or dry rotted, you could be looking at potentially multiple vacuum leaks. Gummed up throttle body, bad O2 sensor, damaged plug wires, worn distributor cap/rotor, etc. all could cause what you are seeing.

Need a bit more info - we have the mileage and model year, what sort of maintenance history does the car have? Did the car run well otherwise? Did you do anything recent to the car, repair or maintenance?