Loss of Power, backfiring - 1991 90 20vq sedan

[Brendan]

On Monday 14 July 2008, theringmeister at triad.rr.com wrote:
> I'm going to venture a guess and say that when you pull the codes you'll
> find your throttle potentiometer has either met its match or is on its way

Innnnteresting...top few things to check:
codes 
throttle potentiometer
plastic distributor gear
knock sensor
MAF

> out.  I had a similar issue in my cq years ago, but I found my throttle pot
> laying on the heat shield for the headers.  It worked its way out of the
> mounting on the underside of the throttle body.  There's a great bit of
> info at 20v.org regarding pulling codes.  You might find it a little more
> difficult than pulling the seat belt bulb out of it's socket and installing
> it in the check engine position like I did on my cq, but there's still a
> relatively easy way to do it without VAG-COM.

Sadly, it looks like I'll have to twist this giant girth underneath the dash 
this weekend, and pull some codes.

> Since you've already changed your O2 sensor, which would have been one of
> my first guesses, I'll only ask if you replaced it with an OE (correct
> plug) or generic (splice) sensor.   I'm not going to go into why I think
> it's worth it to buy the OE sensor, but suffice to say I didn't go the
> splice route.

Oh, Huw Powell taught me to replace with only OE, or something yellow.