If there was a problem with the MAF sensor would there be an indication on the dashboard. I dont have any lights up.

rgds

I dont believe that its load related, it happens on low gears, but there is also instances where I have been in 5th gear and the car is sluggish and doesnt accelerate, even with the pedal to the metal its sticks at 50, falling if going up a hill. When i start off from a roundabout the car is slow to respond, I get notification of it happening when driving along and you can feel the car sort of pulling.

Its got me stumped !

I had the same problem - especially changing from 1st to 2nd. I thought it may be something to do with my clutch (never driven a manual before this car)

I used a can of BG44k, for a general 'clearout' - it sorted the problem completely. I dont know how; but it did. So I can only assume it was something to do with carbon build up.

Try a can - kwik-fit sell them for £20. You can buy slightly cheaper online (cheapest i've seen is around £16)

Arrgh! There's nothing worse than a problem that 'solves' itself at the most inopportune moment-at the garage!

I still think you have a misfire problem. If the emissions are ok, then your lambda and MAF must be ok.

Coil packs and HT leads are also fine.

I would try reseating the crank sensor and cleaning the connection. Check the wiring harness from the ECU too.

I had a similar problem that was a swine to solve. The engine would peridically judder, cut out then run normally. Tried almost everything. Finally pulled the wiring harness off the ECU. Bingo! Ingess of water was intermittently shorting the power supply to the ECU. I'm not saying that this is the case for you, but that's where I'd start looking.

Trace back the wiring from the coils. They will be triggered via the ECU.

Out of curiosity, when the car judders does your rev counter start fluttering?

When I was fault finding my juddering problem, I scrounged some bad coil packs from a local garage. Under full throttle, the engine misfired horribly, but the rev counter stayed steady.

When the juddering started with the good coil packs, the rev counter flopped down to zero. This is because the short circuit shut off the ECU which then couldn't trigger the injectors, the spark plugs, or the rev counter. In hindsight the symptoms were obvious and unambiguous, but initially I started replacing sensors and coil packs-to no avail!

Well I set off to work this morning, a bit worried over what might lie ahead......The first 5 miles went ok before the famous labouring started, changing down a couple of gears and then moving up again allowed me to over come the drop in speed/power. I looked at the rev counter throughout the whole period when it was happening and the counter remainded steady without any reduction. The problem remained for another 5 or 6 miles before stopping and the remaining travel to work was uneventful. So I am now at work and thinking about what problems I might have on the way back, hopefully none. I am now wondering if the problem has been cleared through the distance run by the gunk I put in yesterday, in 10 hrs I will find out.

Let me know if you solve it,I have a 25 1.4.. ie K series, I replaced the coilpacks thinking that was the cause,looks like I was wrong,so got to have a rethink on possible causes though almost exhausted everything that normally causes it and as usual diagnostics comes up as nothing wrong

The cleaning agent I got was Forte, it didnt work lol....As explained to me tonight if it had been problem with the injectors then it would not have been labouring or intermittant fault but a constant one.

I dont believe it is a temperature one, the temp remains constant throughout and there is no evidence of leakage from any area. One the way back tonight it was fine for the first 12 miles, when I started reducing power to 30 or 40 mps it began. However you still get the problem at 50 or 60 sometimes

I put the problem to my friendly neighbour who works with tractors and other types of engines to see if he had any idea of what might be causing it, he said that he would have followed the pattern I had however he was going to talk to a friend in the garage next door to him to is a 'world of information' and see if he has any idea.

He did seem to think that it was a fuel problem though, asking if there was more than one filter on the car. My understanding was that there was only one, situated in the engine compartment area.

There is another sensor on the carberattor area, so tomorrow I will take it off and clean it up to see if that resolves the matter, its directly opposite the mechanism sorry I dont know which one it is, but its different from the other two lol....

The saga continues !!!

.

Well took the car to another local garage and they performed a full diagnostic check on the car to try and locate the source of the problem. I got a call from them later advising me that they had located one fault which might or might not be the full cause and it needs to be sorted to confirm. The item was a lambda sensor on the front of the engine manifold. It was situated midway on the engine casing. They replaced it, performed another check and it sailed through. So now the car is purring again, the gas checks were very good and stated so by the garage. It turns out that the sensor regulates the amount of oxygen to the system and was giving false readings which caused it to struggle. I will take a photo of it tomorrow and hopefully it will solve someone elses problems. Many thanks to all those members who supplied suggestions as to the cause.