After I got that great UOA I posted a couple of days ago, of COURSE I have another problem!! My wife called me at work today after barely making it home. Here's what happened:
She drove 10 miles to her destination without any problems- the van ran normally. Incidentally, it was raining heavily today- warmest day in months (in mid-40s with rain). The van sat for 45 min. (still raining), started fine, then shuddered on acceleration. It was front to back kind of shuddering, like she was hitting stops; not like a rumble strip like in other descriptions of shuddering on this forum. It was not like a chugging. She noted that she had to accelerate slowly. If she accelerated too quickly, the shuddering occurred. Shuddering was occurring when driving over 40 mph, bad enough to make her back off while driving. She drove home with the hazards on and drove under 40 mph. Once in the housing development, where the limit is 20 mph, the CEL was on solid. When driving faster, the CEL was actually blinking. Trans shifted normally- 1st to 2nd, and 2nd to 3rd was fine. No jerking, bucking or anything while shifting.
I'm thinking this is a bad coil pack. With the trans shifting normally, hopefully it's not the trans or torque converter. It sounds electrical based to me the since CEL came on and speed seemed to be a factor (over 40 mph shuddering). I found it strange how the symptoms came on suddenly like that, but I've read some posts where a bad coil pack presented itself suddenly like that, though maybe not identically.
Given that when I got home, it was freezing rain and flash freezing, I ain't goin' anywhere. The high temps today melted a lot of the arctic tundra snow up here in NNY, and the streets were all soaked. Now they're all a sheet of ice. My little Mazda with it's Blizzaks was having some trouble staying on point, so the van's staying parked for tonight. I'll get it out tomorrow to see if it's still doing this.
Our other theory is that the vehicle is now acting up because we just, LAST NIGHT, sent the bank the balance of what is due on the thing!! Tell me THAT's not ironic!
So I sure could use some of y'all's expertise here! Thanks in advance!!