Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting ZETEC PROBLEMS

I have a 96 ZETEC, it has about 145,000 kms on it. I'm having a strange problem with it. When I hit the gas, I hear, sounds like a pssssst sound, b4 the car will go anywhere. When it does that, half the time the car stalls out. Plus when I'm driving, sometimes my car will strugle to catch upto traffic. You can hear the car struggling and when it's shifts, it shifts really hard. I know its not the transmission cause I just replaced it and it was doing it b4 I replaced the tranny. Can anybody help me out?

THANKS

Dion

I'm starting to notice a similar problem, on mine, it's a 97. Same thing, step on the gas, hear a psssst sound and the car tries to studder and wants to die sometimes, then will pick up and go and be fine. Will do it every so often and then it's all fine for a long time and then will start acting up again. But mines never shifted hard like you are saying yours is... I have been wondering myself what it could be... Don't know if I need to have the pcv valve replaced as it's never been done or if it's the egr valve starting to get clogged. I'm not getting any cel's or codes when I hook into the obd-II scanner so I don't know what's going on.

I've seen the hard shifting problem firsthand. It will usually do it when I am at full throttle and let off right before it would do the 1-2 shift. I have had it do it before and it made a little chirp and some torque steer. It was very cool, but I was thinking *aah! motor mounts!* when it did it. IIRC, there is a TSB out for it.

I had my car studder free for about a week. I changed the plug wires and reset the computer. Then it slowly came back.

Sounds like it might be a vacuum leak.

Where does the sound emanate from? Please be specific.

My 98 is doing the exact same thing I thought it was because my air mixture was getting to lean, and my cat was clogged. Yesterday as I was slowing down the car started to lurching ( as if someone relesed the cluth too fast but my car isn't MTX) then when I steped on the gas the car lagged then all of a sudden took off. I'm also wondering if it's my computer becasue sometime when I goto accelerate from a standstill the car will lag upto 2500 RPM hten it will just accelrate upto 6000RPM and I wont even be flooring it.