first of all, its an 88 TII with 114,000 miles.

I was driving my car today and I was going to visit mr. redline but at about 6,000 rpm, the engine just cut out quickly and struggled to go for a couple seconds, then BAM power is back and it redlines.

I'm thinking, okay wtf? Then I decided it was probably fuel cut so I boosted again to see how high I was boosting. The boost guage read no higher than normal and it once again sputtered at 6000 and again at 6500. So I decide I need to take it home and check the vac lines and such. At this point I was thinking it was a clogged catalytic converter since the original is still on there. As I'm going home it seems to be running fine. Then I hit a stop light. I go to accelerate from the stop light and before I shift into 2nd gear at about 3,500 rpm it sputters and power is lost. At this point I'm really scared so I decide to take it really easy and not accelerate hard at all. Well, I get off of the highway and I went right to avoid making the left turn that I usually do. I go to turn around in a parking lot and as I'm coasting in with the clutch in, it stalls.

So I start it back up and pull out of the parking lot, now its sputtering at about 2,500 rpm. It did that the rest of the way home. As soon as I got it into my driveway I opened the hood to look for any obvious vaccum leaks and such but I found nothing. This is really scaring me. On the entire trip back I was watching the oil pressure guage and it looked normal even though the car is slightly low on oil. I was also watching the temp guage and it never raised above normal. The car was sort of low on fuel but I'm not sure how low because my guage doesn't work.

Someone please help me, This is really scaring me.

Thanks in advance.

 

How is the idle??
Could also be a clogged fuel filter.
ALso could be shot spark plugs (check them!) or cracked wires.

If the idle is rough and sounds lopey, they you popped your engine, doa compression test.

 

It idles smooth. The fuel filter and spark plugs were replaced about 3,000 miles ago. The wires have not been replaced. I will try that next. Any other ideas? There's no way this is a poped engine because when its not choking it pulls really hard. Its

choke, choke, choke, BOOST, choke choke choke BOOST. It just feels like its dieing and then there's an explosion of power. Of course this is only when I had it floored, which I did, because I was trying not to get rear ended by traffic and the car refused to accelerate.

 

I had this happen too. Although it started in the middle of a 300 trip. I decided it was fuel starvation. I knew it wasn't the fuel filter, I knew it wasn't injectors. It had to be fuel pump. I figured out the pump was running fine, it was the pre-filter on the pickup. it was clocked with this layer of brown stuff. I called around and couldn't find the filter so I bought a can of carb cleaner, disassembled the whole unit and cleaned the **** out of it. PUt it back together, it even fixed a slight hesitation I had at 5k.
Take out your pump and look at the pre-filter.

 

Thanks a ton tweaked. That makes sense to me. Now that you meantion that, it cut out and felt the same way it does when I take a left turn too fast. The fuel sock is in the tank isn't it?

I'm still going to replace the spark plug wires though since you reminded me bambam7.

 

Ditto on the fuel starvation. Just in case you didnt know there are two fuel filters (one is in tank, the one we are referring to). You said your fuel level gauge doesnt work so you dont know how much gas you had. If you have ever run th tank to almost empty there is a chance debris got sucked into the filter. Just a thought. It could also be your fuel pump if it is defective or not getting proper voltage due to old wiring and/or too many accesories on.

 

I fixed the problem simply by adding gas to the tank. Apparently the dirty part of the pre-filter is on the bottom so when I accelerated at all the gas would slosh to the back of the tank and would go below the clean part of the pre-filter. I will be replacing that filter as soon as possible because adding gas is only a temporary fix, and I'm sick of having to take it easy on left turns!