My car starts and runs good in lower gears.The problem is, the warmer it gets the worse it runs. When i accelerate to 4th gear, it runs crappy. There's no pickup at all and I seem to lose speed and power. The whole motor feels like it's shuddering. Sounds ok in neutral. Any ideas?

 

5-speed or slush-box?

 

It's a 5 speed.

 

I know sometimes when you have a spark plug wire arching it will act this way or if the distributor cap is cracked. It will only miss when under load. I would crank the car at night and manually rev it while you are under the hood and see if you see any arching. See if you can make it run crappy by just reving it from under the hood. I say to do this at night, so it will be dark and you can see if you are loosing spark anywhere. Also make sure the wire going to your coil is on tight...my car ran similar to what you are describing when the coil wire was not hooked up well. Goodluck.

-Carson

 

Check for codes definately. Could be a bad CHTS, maybe your timing is not right..

S

 

^^^ what he said... it sounds like an ignition issue.. either a bad wire or the timing's probably off

 

Also check the coil....that is a common thing the motor does with a bad coil. As it heats up, the coil starts getting a sporatic charge.

S

 

Everything seems to be tight, no arching. I'll get a hold of a timing light and pull codes tomorrow. Thx guys.....

 

Well, i said it wasn't arching but a friend listened to it and got shocked when he touched the distributer cap. The #2 wire was shocky. Replaced the cap , button and wires. Runs real good now, thx.

 

Get A Better Car

 

Hmmm....I wonder if I should trust the advice of a guy that drives ugly crap. :P

S

 

I don't want a "better" car. I happen to like the body style of this one. They just don't make cars like they used to.