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Hey guys, sorry if this is long, but I figured I give you the whole story. Thanks for reading.
I have a 97 SET 5-speed and I replaced my head gasket. After I finished and got the car running again, I drove the car gently for about 100-115 miles, never reving beyond 3000 RPM, just getting a touch of boost if any. I didn't know if that was necessary or not, but I figured it wouldn't hurt. After my little break in period, I changed the oil this morning, and I noticed something really weird.
I started the car when it was up on jack stands just to make sure there were no leaks after my job was complete. I put the car in neutral and got out to take a peek just to make sure everything was dry. At that time, I noticed that the front passenger wheel was spinning, but the front drivers side was not. Really weird, considering none of them should be spinning at all! I hopped back in the car, pressed and released the brake pedal, and took another look at the front passenger wheel, which was now still. Out of curiosity, I gave it a tiny push with my foot, and low and behold, it started spinning again. It was slowly spinning, so I stopped it with my shoe, but it seemed really weird. I have not seen that before.
Cut to a couple of hours later, after running some errands in the morning in city traffic, and getting back on the boost a bit (4000 to 4500 RPM), I came home and dropped off my Costco haul. Everything seemed fine. After about another hour, I left and got on the highway, thinking that I would do some full throttle runs in 3rd to reset the ECU. That's when things got weird.
I had some hesitation and hiccups while I was accelerating, and the throttle would stick for a bit after I let up. I figured that the ECU was just doing it's thing and trying to figure out what was going on. From there, the hesitation and hiccups got worse, so I pulled off to a frontage road and took a peek under the hood to see if everything looked OK. It did, no leaks, no smoke.
I got back in the car, started it up, and it revved to 5000 RPM without me touching a thing. I freaked out, turned the car off, and let it sit for a minute while I searched Saabnet from my phone. I turned the car on again, it revved up to 5000 RPM again, and held there until I blipped the throttle. The engine then backed down to 1500 RPM and started surging to 2000 RPM. The surging didn't stop, so I turned the car off and did some more searching of the forums. I checked the vacuum hoses and everything looked good, nothing popped off and everything seemed to be connected correctly. I also looked underneath the car again, but nothing was leaking out, thankfully.
I couldn't find anything, so I started the car again, it revved to 5000 RPM again, I blipped the throttle and it went back to surging. I decided to limp home so I could write this post.
On the way home, things got super extra dang weird. While I was driving and tolerating the engine hesitating and bucking, I noticed that when I pushed the clutch in to shift gears (around 2500 or 3000), the engine would continue to rev to 4500-5000 RPM, then drop back down. Also, if the car was in gear and I was not touching any of the pedals, it would accelerate on its own, at a different rate, depending on how high the gear was that I was in. Weird, right?!?!? Sometimes it would stop on it's own, some times it would not, and I would put the clutch in and brake.
To add an extra layer of weirdness icing, When I pressed in the brakes, it seemed like I was braking with far less power than normal. I had to really anticipate traffic, and when I pushed the pedal really hard, it did not bite or brake hard.
I'm perplexed. I'm letting the car cool down now, then I'll take a look to see if I can find any vacuum leaks, blown intercooler hoses, squirrels in the tranny, etc. I may also try to remove my MBC to see if that is causing some kind of issue. Please let me know if you have any suggestions, or have seen this before. Thanks for reading, and I hope your car is running better than mine currently is.
posted by 75.71.251...
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