frankcougar

I have a 1996 Civic EX. Everything is stock. I'm in the middle of a 3000 mile road trip and it started sputtering a little. I noticed it about a month ago when down shifting. It would only stutter real quick one time. Then about two days ago on this trip it started sputtering under medium acceleration. Now it's doing it a little bit even at constant speeds with low rpms. I would have bet my left foot that it was the fuel filter. It has 153k on it and I bought it with 147k. I put a new fuel filter in it today and it seems a little better but it did not clear up the problem. It also doesn't seem to do it until the engine gets up to normal operating temp. The gas that came out of the old filter looked a little dirty even on the output side of the filter. I really thought a new fuel filter was going to solve the issue. Any other guesses what it might be? The only other thing I can come up with is dirty injectors. I bought some spark plugs for it but the first one I pulled out of it looked almost brand new so I put it back in. Figured I'd save the new plugs for when I need them. Looks like it's burning everything well based on the plug I did pull. I did not pull all four plugs though. The stuttering is not a constant thing so i wasn't real suspicious of the plugs anyway. That was just kind of a preventative thing. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.