1996 subaru help

[driftingouttosea]

Hello everybody. I've done a bunch of online searching for my particular problem on this forum and others and haven't found anything quite the same, so it's time to put it out there,

I've got a '96 manual shift OB wagon with 140k. It's got a strange power loss that I can't seem to track down. The car starts and idles fine, smoothest idle I've ever felt in a car with high miles in fact. But sometimes, usually even, when I start accelerating, while I'm still engaging the clutch and I'm below about 2k rpm, it feels like the engine is missing and sometimes it even backfires a bit. Then after about 2k it's fine. It never stalls and never does it outside that rpm range, and only under load, I can't get it to do it when I'm under the hood reving it by hand. Also if I'm at lower rpm but already moving I can get the car to stutter/miss by giving the engine a lot of gas. This is the first subaru I've owned and to me it felt like the timing was out, so I pulled out the book I got with the car (chiltons) and low and behold, no distributor, no manualy adjusted timing. The engine check light has never turned on, but I took it to Autozone and had the codes read anyway to no result.


I did see some posts about having a problem with the alternator and brake lights flashing caused by a bad alternator that would cut out and different points in the powerband. I did have those lights flashing a few months back. I put my volt meter on the battery and the alternotor output was fluctuating. I wiggled the plug and it has been fine every since.

My battery is not the freshest, but it is a good battery, and I've never had to jump it so i'm not inclined to suspect it, but....

Anyway, if any of this is known to anyone out there, I would really appreciate some direction in where to look for a problem.

Thanks!!

[sha_zapple]

Whens the last time you replaced the plug wires, sparkplugs, air filter, or fuel filter?

I suggest trying those. I had a studder due to a half broken plug wire. BTW, cars nowadays have coil packs instead of distributors, its all conmputer controlled.

If none of the above work, try a new coil pack or installing a grounding kit (the stock grounding isnt that great)