No power when I accelerate

brodiebabe

Registered User
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637
Recently I notice that I don't seem to have much power in my car when I accelerate. Then the car sort of chokes and then accelerates really fast. Today, however, I had absolutely no power in 1st gear. I had to put my hazards on and slowly go - even with my foot to the floor. Any ideas what could be wrong? Is's a 1999 Polo
 
Has the car been serviced properly ?

It could be faulty spark plugs, a faulty spark plug lead, dirt in the carburettor body/fuel injector, a faulty accelerator cable .........
 
Thanks for that, will get it serviced soon. Bought it a few months ago from a dealer and didn't get it serviced or anything. It just passed its NCT though last week!
 
I had a similar problem before but in a different car to a Polo. It was a sensor that was at fault. It measured the emissions from the car and then the amount of fuel injected into the engine was based on this reading. It gave me a similar problem to what you described above.
 
Sounds like the MAF sensor (Mass air flow), nothing to do with emissions though and as far as I'm aware this would be limited to turbo-charged cars (inc tdis). Doubt thats the Polos problem but I wouldn't be driving it until I got it to the garage since you could potentially be making a small problem much much bigger.

So don't get it serviced 'soon' bring it back to the dealer now!
 
sounds like dirt in the petrol as if it was something more serious I am sure the NCT crowd would have picked it up.

Was the petrol level low at the time?
 
Or water getting in to the petrol tank ( as happened to me, I had to get a new fuel pump).
 
brodiebabe said:
Recently I notice that I don't seem to have much power in my car when I accelerate.

Do the revs go up?
if so could well be clutch slipping..
 
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