Miata Mailing List: February 1999, Message #116

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OK.  I am hurting because my poor little blue car is hurting.  I 
traded cars for the day, my '92 Mariner Blue for my friends 
Mustang 5.0.  Although I don't get a real kick out of driving those 
(having already owned a couple) he wanted to experience the Miata 
experience.  I thought a conversion was in the making.  Well, 
maybe not.

He brings it back to me after the Super Bowl and it is limping 
along, to say the least.  I have owned her for a year, and it now has 
30K miles on it.  No problems ever until now.  Here are the 
symptoms:  hard starting, small "pops" from the tail pipe, erratic 
idle ranging +-500 rpm, extreme loss of torque, and hesitation and 
jerking at low rpm.  When the car jerks on acceleration, a clunking 
or popping noise can be heard.  He said this started after putting 
3.5 gallons of Super America 93 octane in it.  I have pretty much 
ruled out bad gas by filling up the tank and adding water remover to 
no avail.  Also, SA says they have moisture sensors in their tanks 
and received no complaints of bad gas recently.  I have also 
changed plugs, for lack of a better idea.  What could it be?  Timing 
chain, plug wires (which I checked for arcs), catalytic converter?  
Please help my baby!

Thanks,
David Karpik