to put this in perspective, i am home from school this weekend and i haven't driven my car in two months or so. my buddy and i went on a road trip and near the end i was asleep in the passenger seat and he was driving -- he woke me up with something along the lines of "dude, your car is doing something weird" and sure enough...
the car would spontaneously "stumble" and lose power briefly and then surge back. this happened at varying speeds, gears, and rpm so the first thing that came to mind was a bad electrical connection somewhere. the car has a cheap battery in it and there is a shitty connection between the negative terminal and the post -- from time to time, the car won't start and i'll have to hop out and mess with the neg terminal. because of this, i'm 90% sure that the bad connection is the source of the weird behavior and i just wanted to see if anybody else thought this was logical.
any input is appreciated.

-tony

also, my car in nearing 30,000 miles and has been running on the same fuel filter, spark plugs, wires, etc since new.

 

I'd think it would be electrical ... esp. since the long period of inactivity and other similar electrical gremlins you've mentioned.

Do something about the negative terminal conection and have the battery checked.

 

Definitely sounds like something electrical. I was recently in my friends VW Passat and that thing just DIED in the middle of driving. Had no power at all, no hazzards, no brake lights, on a very windy road AT NIGHT. Scary to say the least. It did turn out to be a bad connection of one of the terminals, it actually just came loose and fell off. Unless you know someone, thats something I would definitely let a dealer take a look.

 

thanks for all the input...i'm planning on fixing that terminal today.