Loss of power tonight, really strange
 

The wife and I took oy 01S out for a drive to find a spot with little light pollution to try and watch the meteor shower....but no luck.

The drive was probably 45 minutes long total, at the far end of our loop I stopped to top off my tank with Shell V Power at $3.04 per gallon ( hard to pass that up ). The car was running like a Swiss watch like it always does. Got caught at a light just before going uphill to a mile long bridge and the final leg to home. As I started up the hill the car was running great and I took first gear to 5K and suddenly it had no power, felt like the accelerator pedal was not connected, I quickly cut across 3 lanes to get on the emergency lane as this car was going nowhere once the inertia was used up.I sat there watching the Tach steady at just below 1K and then surge up to aro9und 1300 rpm, the surge lasted only a brief time. I tried to give it gas and it would surge to 1300 and then back to below 1000....eve. with he foot to the floor. I thought "Oh Hell what has happened to my pride and joy"

There were no warning light on the dash, no peculiar sounds, no smoke or dripping oil. I thought it is 11:00 PM at night, I do not want to leave my car here. So I did only what I could think to do, I turned it off and counted to 5...started the car back up and it ran like a champ....like nothing happened. I kept it below 4K RPM all the way home and parked it. Outside not hot ticking sounds, no oil from the muffler, nothing out of the ordinary. The temp gauge was just to 180 deg where it always runs......Puzzled in Alabama

Thanks for any help

Dwight

Throttle body connection
 

Hi Dwight, sorry you’re having issues but it sounds like you handled that situation well! I’m wondering if you’ve done any recent work on the car where maybe an electrical connection was not fully re-seated. Have you checked the electrical connection to the throttle body?

Check the MAF sensor

As Van914 suggests, suspect the MAF sensor.
My car had the same symptoms when the MAF started to **************** the bed.
Try unplugging it and driving it. The worst you’ll get is a CEL because the car doesn’t get a signal from the sensor which goes away once you plug it back in again.

Mine did exactly the same thing, but no loss of power that I was aware of (it had the erratic idle), but then I limped it home... then threw a code sitting in a parking lot. Still basically drivable. Cleaned my MAF, good to go... oddly enough, while I think about it, right after a fuel fill as well.

You should be able to drive it home, just keep it mellow.

I could never repeat this situation
 

I took the car out the next day and drove it about 10 miles with several runups to 6K RPM and this never happened again. It is resting in its garage for winter, will clean the MAF later

I really appreciate all the help folks

Dwight

I think sometimes these older girls just get a little b!tchy...