Q: Car sputters when I hit the gas hard especially in low second gear
I've noticed the past couple weeks or so that my car didn't seem to have the same power as before. I thought it may have been a bad fill up with water in the tank so I ran it down till the gas light came on and put half a tank of 98 octane in to help clean it out. I noticed that the car responded better and seemed to be a little quicker than normal (I usually put reg gas in) now when I'm in second gear and want to step on it the car hesitates, try's to spool up, sputters two or three times then gets going. The car idels fine and runs fine as long I don't go hard. I like to run my car pretty hard most of the time. I put a ram air intake on about 2 years ago and switched the turbo blow off to release into the atmosphere. About 2 or 3 months ago I replaced the spark plugs only. I change my oil every 5k miles with synthetic. Any ideas would greatly be appreciated. Thanks.
My car has 58000 miles.
My car has a manual transmission.
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Hi there. This can be caused by a few different things. Most of the time when it comes up all of a sudden it is due to a lack of air flow due to an intake leak, a sensor that is not reading right, or possibly you have a fuel system issue. I usually start by installing my scan tool to check the sensor readings and to check the fuel trim readings. This will let me know if the issue is fuel or air related. I have also seen a lot of these cars with programming issues. Typically all that takes is an update to correct this issue. If the sensors are reading fine then I will usually clean out the air flow sensor to see if there is any change. If not then I reprogram the computer if nothing else is found. If you want to have this hesitation checked out, consider YourMechanic, as a certified mechanic can come to you to [diagnose why the vehicle is losing power] https://www.yourmechanic.com/services/car-is-not-getting-enough-power-inspection
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