Today coming home from Jacksonville, I was on the East side of Jax and I live about an hour away in Macclenny (half-way between Jax and Lake City).
Anyway, on my way back, while driving through downtown Jax, out of nowhere, my car starts lurching and acting REALLY weird. My first thought was that the clutch was slipping. This seems likely, as I have been having little problems with the tranny such as the third-gear-grind and it just being really picky about how quick I let out the clutch under normal driving.
It wasn't too bad in the city traffic as it was low-speed driving (no more than about 35MPH), but once I started getting above about 40MPH (onto the highway; I-95 and I-10), my car would be lurching nonstop. Not so much as it was throwing me out of my seat or anything, but just kind of jumping. The faster I'd go, the worse the jumping would get, so I had to drive about 55 the whole way back.
I'm not convinced it is all the tranny tho. I have a suspicion it could be fuel-starvation-related. While the lurching was taking place, loss of power was apparent. I'd try to accelerate and it would act like I was in too high of a gear.
The most interesting part was about halfway between Jax and Macclenny (the Baldwin exit), the traffic had slowed quite a bit. When it picked up back to highway speeds, I tried to accelerate back to at least 60, but no-go. I lost power almost completely. It never completed died on me, but I was forced to pull over to the side of the road, as the car had decelerated itself to about 25MPH (even with me trying to press the accelerator). As I mentioned, the engine didn't die but when I came to a stop, it was idling rough. I shut off the engine, popped the hood, and tried to spot anything obvious around the tranny or throttle body. I kinda pushed on the airbox in a way to find an obstruction or something, then proceeded to manually open the throttle (with the engine still off) just to see if anything was blocking the movement or anything. After not finding anything obvious, I restarted the engine, pulled back onto the highway and drove the remaining 9 miles home as if nothing was wrong at all. 70MPH was obtained without a problem the whole way home, with no sign of lurching.
I have to make this trip to Jax twice a week, so I don't want to be stranded in the middle of Jacksonville one day. Any suggestions on what to do?
