Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Hesitation when cold

When cold, my '95 SE (140,000 miles, manual trans, no mods) hesitates badly. When you let out the clutch and try to accelerate, it's as if you aren't even on the throttle at all. Push in the clutch, rev it up, let out the clutch quickly while the revs are up and then it goes (because you "forced" it). After just a minute or two of driving, this symptom disappears completely. This is NOT fun when trying to jump out in front of traffic! Any ideas? This is the one thing that is irking me about this car and my mechanic doesn't seem to have any ideas. There are no codes being thrown at all. I'm betting it's a simple fix, but I don't really know what to try.

Thanks for any info!

~Steve

I had a really bad hesitation once to, replace the upstream O2 sensor and it went away. I had the hesitation, then a few days later the CEL was on for the O2 sensor.

I'm not saying go drop $80 for the thing, maybe wait a few days to see if the CEL comes on.