car is bucking under acceleration...any ideas? Options

[era vulgaris]

My car has developed an extremely annoying bucking under acceleration. It started about a week ago, and at first it would only happen while accelerating out of a fast turn. But now it does it all the time while accelerating. It's like the car is oscillating between half power and full power, making it lurch-slow-lurch-slow-lurch-slow. It's like you're riding a bucking bronco or something. The only cure seems to be to get off the throttle completely, upshift, then slowly accelerate.

Anyone have any idea where I should start looking first?

[era vulgaris]

Aha! i finally got it. After a couple weeks or whatever of dealing with this, and after cleaning the dizzy, cleaning every electrical contact I could find, after replacing the fuel filter, and after thinking I had a bad intake air temp sensor, and having nothing permanently fix the problem...I finally figured the issue out!

I decided to clean all the multi pin connectors on the relay board today, and when I went to unhook the negative battery terminal, the clamp broke off of the main ground wire that connects to the chassis. There were probably only a couple wires of the multi core cable still attached to the clamp, which would've not been enough to handle the full current all the electronics needed. Probably on occasion the wire would move close enough to the connector to make decent contact for full power, and then move away again when I'd lose power.

Got a new connector on there and the car is GOLDEN! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/aktion035.gif) Full power under all driving conditions, and everything on the car seems to be working better.
Moral of the story: check the obvious shit first before diving into the complex stuff!

[dknechtly]

Geesh, thanks for posting the solution. That's probably a lesson learned for a lot of us! Glad all is now well.