Bucking/Hesisating, rough idle and loss of "oomph"

Thanks Mike,

I think its definitely an intermittent fault as it played up really severely on Monday night, but then yesterday and today has been absolutely fine with no bucking or hesitation, and the only thing I still notice is there's not as much pull as there should be on accelerating with a 1.6 engine.

Does it still sound like carbon build up though if its intermittent or is there anything else I should be keeping an eye on?

Deb

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your response. As I am not mechanically minded, I took it to my local garage as they were addressing a separate issue (whereby there was a very strong smell of fuel during gear changes in the lower gears)

This was obviously a long-standing fault as paperwork from the previous owner showed the car had recently had a new fuel line front-to-back, and may have been linked to whatever was causing the bucking/hesitation problem.

Well, the garage replaced the tank and an exhaust section †and had the car for a week whereby they took it in turns to drive it around for a day and see if the bucking took place. It didn’t, so they gave me back the car on Wednesday 22nd. It seemed fine and didn’t buck once.
However, over the weekend just gone I had an electrical issue with dirty contacts causing lights to malfunction, and a burnt out part of the alternator cable causing the alternator to fail and I drove 5 miles on battery alone (just made it home!)

I did wonder maybe once the alternator cable had been repaired that maybe that could have had something to do with the bucking and surging issue if it was causing a jump from battery power to engine power quickly, but last night when I was driving home from a night out, the bucking started again and was continuous for about 3 miles in a row.
I was naturally livid with the car having just spent out on a fuel tank, and had the other troubles so I stamped hard on the gas pedal. There was a short hesitation (which I can only akin to fuel starvation for a moment) then the bucking cleared and it was absolutely fine during the drive into work this morning, so quite literally have no idea at all what is the problem at the moment! Does it still sound like carbon build up, or does it sound like there is an intermittent problem somewhere in the throttle mechanism?

All I know is this car is more trouble than its worth :-(

Try waiting till it is dark out side start your car pop the hood and look around with the engine at idle you will be lookin for any sign of a spark from either your spark plug wires or any thing that goes down the line to them, you could have a faulty wire or a wire that has had the coating rubbed off if this is that case it will be arcking to ground rather than arcking at the ends of your spark plug. I had this same problem sputtering and cutting out during acceleration thought it could be fuel related but did this before and saved myself some money finding out that it was just a short. Good luck