car runs badly with no throttle response

[scrowler]

1987 ford laser ghia, 1.6L EFI engine, 230,000 km

hi,

recently my car was not running at all, i found the fault to be the fuel pump, which i replaced, and now it starts and idles.

as soon as i put the throttle in, the rev's go down, and when i let it out it jumps up a thousand or so then back to normal, running pretty badly (spluttering, backfiring etc).

i can give it gas and it will slowly increase the revs to about 3000 spluttering and backfiring, then after that it seems to go up a bit smoother to the higher revs.

if i clamp the fuel return hose a bit then it's a bit smoother when i give it more throttle, but that puts strain on the fuel pump and i don't want to do this at all.

the exhaust has a little white/grey smoke coming out (not alot) and i saw a tiny plume of smoke coming from what looked like the exhaust manifold.

can you help me? thanks,
robbie

[gouldie1903]

my guess is fuel fliter

[GreyGoose006]

no, i dont think so.
that would have to be one seriously screwed up fuel filter, although it does seem like a possibility.

even so, it doesnt explain all the other symptoms.

start checking sensors i guess...

[gouldie1903]

yea when fuel filter clogged i had similar symtoms with out the smoke, but the metal line before the filter was rusting from the inside. i took it off and turned it upside down and hade a nice little pile of rust

[scrowler]

fuel filter hmm wouldn't have guessed that was the problem... i'm going to check the computer for error codes tomorrow

[GreyGoose006]

what happens if it is idling and you quickly floor the throttle (in neutral)
if it were the fuel filter and it were clogged that badly, it would probably stall.

my guess is something else is going on, but i could be wrong.

the good news is that fuel filters are pretty easy to change.

[2.2 Straight six]

Clean the MAF.

had similar problems with the Golf, got the MAF all cleaned up and it worked perfectly.

[scrowler]

the fuel filter is pretty new and the air filter is brand new... are they really worth replacing?

[GreyGoose006]

like i said, its probably not the fuel filter.
it sounds like a sensor issue.

maybe some kind of throttle position sensor or airflow sensor.