Poor running '00 neon

[SFO]

2000 neon
60k miles
car chugs at idle and has intermitent check engine light
I had some similiar driveability issues 4 months ago and replaced the oem plugs which were champions with some NGKs.
The oe plugs had the electrodes erroded and after the plug change the car ran great again.
Last week car starts to chug again.
Dump some new bosch plugs in it.
The ngks look a bone white with a light brown at the base of the electrode.
Still chugs, right at start up it runs pretty normal, then when it warms up it has a 3cyl idle followed by spitting and popping when you try to roll into the throttle.
At work today I hook it up to the snap-on scanalyzer to see what kind of error codes I am getting.
The box says no codes present.
What am I missing?
How do I get to stored codes w/ the snap on scanalyzer?
Does it need the check engine light to be on to read a code?
Homeboy tirechanger at work says it is probably an O2 sensor or a coolant temp sensor.
I just don't want to drop a couple hundred on sensors that don't fix the chug.
Rather spend it on beer.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance, Bill.

[gbrich]

I think its your power steering pressure switch, they go bad fast on neons.I replaced plugs and wires before I found out what the problem was.

[mateusz]

i had the same problem i got a cel though and it poped out as 0500
which is the speed sensor one, we replaced the speed sensor,
it's still going on

the car is doing the same thing that your car was doing sfo

what would the power steering pressure switch have anything to do with
this behavior?????

matt

[SFO]

Originally Posted by gbrich

I think its your power steering pressure switch, they go bad fast on neons.I replaced plugs and wires before I found out what the problem was.

P/S pressure switch...
Nice first post!
What am I the new guy magnet?