No Subject

[Ralph Poplawsky <ralphp@cellport.com>]

Can anyone help me?  My '91 200TQ 20V has acceleration loss and the dealer
may own my house before it is fixed.  The symptom is as follows.  The car
runs like a top up to about 1/2 to 2/3 throttle.  After that there is
intermittent power loss varying from a 'missing' feeling to cutting in and
out to stumbling along and hardly accelerating.  If I back off on the
throttle when this happens, the engine smooths out and acceleration actually
increases.  The problem appears to be worse in hot weather.  The boost gauge
reads full boost.  Repeated acceleration runs sometimes result in temporary
improvement.

Some background:  Several years ago, there was a similar problem, but with
boost loss.  The dealer spent $5000 (in warranty) swapping parts to no
avail, and finally figured out (from the factory) that the cam timing was
slightly off, the computer was sensing too much advance and shutting down
boost.  The current problem began after the 60K mile service at which time
the dealer replaced the timing belt.  I don't know if the current problem is
related to cam timing or the 60K service, but I'm suspicious.  
So far, my dealer has charged me $250 for a new O2 sensor which has not
fixed the problem.  He wants the car back to 'go further' but can't really
say what that means. The owner of the dealer suggested that the regional
service rep would be in, so why not have him look at it.  So, I gave him the
information and later heard from the dealers' service department that he had
nothing to say about it because he is only interested in 'in-warranty'
vehicles. 

If anybody has had this problem, or has any good advice. I would be very
grateful.