My car has developed a serious hesitation problem in the last week when in low RPM, 1-3K. If I am running on low RPM's in any gear, it will jerk and hesitate, and a couple of times it sounded like it was trying to backfire or something, it was a low sounding pop from under the car. If I rev it pretty hard and open the throttle through each of the gears, it will run fine, but when I try to give it gas when I am just cruising if feels as if it is being choked to death. Does anyone have any clues as to what the problem might be?

The car has 160K, the fuel filter is only 2 years old, the spark plugs and wires are less than a year old. My air filter is also new.

Please help, I have a bad feeling that it will soon die while I'm out driving!!

 

Just a suggestion but you might want to add fuel injector cleaner and/or check you injectors.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I am afraid that it could be more than that however. I regularly run fuel injector cleaner through the engine, and I almost always use 93 octane. I'll keep it in mind though.

 

my friend just had the same problem on his 92 325i (167k). one of his coils were out, which meant his 5th cylinder wasnt workin. while the car is on, pull a spark plug out and put it to the nut on the valve cover and see if there is spark. do it one by one. if one of them is not sparking, then that cylinder may not be working...if not that, possibly one of your injectors are out. did your car have a little truoble when you started it up liek did it start up right away?

 

I'll try the spark test. The car starts just fine, no problems there, it is only when I push on the gas through the low RPM's.

 

I went ahead and ordered an o2 sensor from a junkyard, it was fifty bucks, not too bad of a price I guess.

I also think I'm going to go ahead and have the fuel filter replaced, any guesses as to the cost for someone to replace the pain in the butt? I changed it last time, but I really do not want to mess with it again.

I pulled the plugs, and they are all looking just as they should. The distributor cap is about two years old, should that need to be replaced by now? I'm not sure about how long those usually last.

The only other guesses I have are fuel pump and injectors, I'm really hoping it is not the fuel pump, besides being tough to replace it's expensive.

What do you all think?

 

I would definitely change the distributor cap & rotor. Also check/replace the wires.

 

i had the same exact problems.. i replaced the coil, cap, rotor, plugs.. and the problem persisted.. so then i finally changed the wires and VIOLA! .. do a little test on the wires even though they might be pretty new they might be faulty still or they just might be arcing. run it in the dark and spray a light mist of water over the wires and look for a little light show. if theres arcing, you will see it. thats the easiest way to check for arcing. good luck. also try some BG44k, thats the hardcore fuel injection cleaner.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Butler230 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">... the fuel filter is only 2 years old

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ONLY ???

 

I am having the fuel filter replaced and the injectors professionally cleaned tomorrow, they are also going to check the plugs, wires, and distributor cap. The shop is also going to check out my a/c problem, hopefully I'll just fix all the problems at the same time, it's going to cost me a fortune, but the car is driving me crazy. Thanks for all the suggestions.