Ok, yesterday I posted that this past weekend I changed the plugs, fuel filter, and cleaned my throttle body. Everything ran fine for 2.5 days and about 150 miles. Yesterday as I was giving the car gas after being stopped at a stop light, it was acting like it wasn't getting any gas (the kind of feeling you would get if you were running out of gas altogether). It was still going but I didn't have any power, and the more gas I gave it didn't seem to go much faster, except that sporadic going and stopping. Almost the kind of problem with rookie 5-speed drivers, though my car is auto. I drove it for about 3 miles till I got where I was going. Came back out after about 5 minutes, started it up and it hasn't done it since. Now, I knew enough that I still needed to check some things. After I got home, I pulled each of the spark plugs out to find that they were gapped to .040 mm (1.0). Yes, I made that rookie mistake of not checking the gap since I was told that NGK Platinums were pre-gapped. So, I gapped them to .043 (1.1) and put them back in. My car still has not had the problem again. I'm just looking for a little piece of mind. Would having the plugs gapped at .040 have cause this problem? I thought I might have gotten a bad fuel filter, but wouldn't it still be doing it if that was the case? and Why would it just stop by turning the car off and then starting back up? Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

Sure you didn't accidentally leave a clamp a bit loose after you cleaned your throttle body? Air leaking in or out after the MAF can cause problems.

 

Or lose hoses on the fuel filter. Do you seem to be gettign any leaks? What kind of plugs did you use for the replacement?

SuDZ

 

Those were some of my first thoughts. I forgot to mention that I looked for any loose hoses or checked for leaks on the fuel filter before I changed the plugs. I used NGK Platinum plugs.

 

You wouldn't happen to know if the little bit of gap difference could have caused this problem?

 

The tiny bit they were off shouldn't have caused much difference.

 

The gap shouldn't cause what happened to your car. When you have sputtering or missing, it is generally either a spark or fuel problem. A spark problem generally triggers the ECU to trip the MIL and indicate "misfire" condition. Since your MIL did not trip, it might be a fuel problem. Sometimes cheapo gas does that. Even good stations occasionally get some junk in their gas, so just keep monitoring the situation and look for patterns if it repeats itself.