Holy shiite batpeople. Looks like it might’ve been the fuel filter as the main culprit. INSIDIOUS is clearly wrong about everything else but he was right about the fuel filter.

This has been a weird drama. I limped to the O’Reilly’s by the skin of my teeth when I first had the problem - put in plugs, cap n rotor, cables, and air filter in the parking lot. When I started it up was quite a bit better but not really 100% - the next day it was closer to 100%.

Then, the same drama a week later before I replaced the coil, I wasn’t limping as bad when I got to O’Reillys for that one, but limping. It ran better, but still funny, the next day it seemed almost ideal. Almost.

That was maybe four or five days ago. Today it started doing the missing and hesitation again. So I’m thinking OK, get over the sqeamishness of having gas drip on you, put in the fuel filter. I had a couple of paper towels to catch the dripping, suckers were dirty when I was done. I shook some more of the fuel out of the old filter, holy crap the paper towel got dirty. I’ve not seen that before.

All I can figure is that the tuning upgrade was badly needed and the two steps gave me enough power to fight the plugged filter. Strange.

I’m going to check all the other stuff anyway, the EGR, the idle valve. Going to clean the sensor contacts as recommended by the unknown poster of seven years ago.

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K