I posted in another sub-forum but it appears pretty dead in there, so excuse me if this is a repost.

I just recently purchased the car mentioned in the title it has 131k miles on it.

The best way I can describe the way this car performs is when you are trying to accelerate from 20+ in 4th gear or something like that. It is shaky, sluggish, etc. It will smooth out eventually and sort of catch up and finally give off some horsepower and smooth acceleration.

Also I have noticed when getting out of the car recently that it smells very slightly like chaffing rubber. I have added a bottle of that fuel injector cleaner that you get for like $3, it didn't really make the problem go away.

Was going to change out all the plugs and wires, but the guy wanted $180 just for labor, so $270 to change the spark plugs and it may or may not fix the problem is hard for me to swallow.

Do you guys have any advice for a novice like me?

 

Either you need new plugs and/or wires, or your clutch is slipping (if you have a manual).

 

Thanks for the reply.

Please understand it acts like this in the normal gear. You are pretty confident that these are symptoms of faulty plugs/wires?

 

One of my plugs f'ed up about a week ago. Revved semi ok in neutral, and ran fine when there wasvery littleload on the engine while cruising. Put any more load on it, and it would studder/misfire like crazy. Unfortunately I have no time to mess with it myself right now, so I had to pay out the wazoo to get new plugs and wires.

 

Yep man that is pretty much exactly what is happening. Oh well, at least if I do pay the $300 I will feel a bit better about it actually working.

 

Any possibility this is related to the mass air sensor or plug to that? might cause the car to stumble.