WTF Is Wrong With My Car?

My friend has a '97 Eclipse GS-T and while he was driving it, the car started sputtering like it wasn't getting any fuel. While the car idles the Tach bounces all over the place, and when you hit the gas it has no pick up and you cant even hear the turbo. BTW, the "check engine" light is on. Any suggestions?

find out the code that is causing the CEL (check engine light) to be on! there could be a ton of things that could cause that... find out why the CEL is on and go from there! you will need a scan tool, they loan them out at autozone (easiest) or you can count the code out and look it up to find out whats wrong with it!

I thought you could not count the code on turbos.

Was the CEL blinking at anytime?

No it doesn't blink, it just stays on.

I've never been able to do the key switch on/off trick to get my trouble codes, but I'm not positive if you can't do it on all turbos. Just get Autozone to read it.

Sounds like a vac leak...make sure the tiny plastic hose coming off his bov hasn't become unplugged or broken, but Jake's right that it could be one of many different things that is the problem.

UPDATE: It turned out that is was only bad spark plug wires, he just bought the car 2 weeks ago and never really checked them, i changed them and the car runs like new now. Thanx for the help.