'91 Camaro...intermittent loss of acceleration

[moviemeg]

Hi,

I was leaving my house today, and was about one minute down the road when my car seemed to stall, except it was still moving along very slowly, and the engine was still on. However, I was not able to accelerate...when I pushed the gas pedal to the floor, nothing happened. This went on for only a few seconds, then it jumped a bit and started accelerating like normal. 30 seconds later, it did the same thing, exept this time I was still driving along at about 25 mph, but could not accelerate any faster. Finally, several seconds later, it lost all ability to accelerate again, and kind of drifted up a small hill as I turned onto a side street. The car never shut off during any of this. I opened the hood to check things out, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However, I then heard a strange rattling/scratchy sound. I turned off the engine, and decided to walk home and wait for my dad to get back from work.

We went back two or three hours later, and the car started up immediately, as before, and seemed to run fine. It took about one minute for the rattling sound to reappear. My dad felt around and noticed that it seemed to be coming from the alternator. I got in the car and drove it back to the house, only about two minutes away, without any issue. Back at the house, dad couldn't figure out what was wrong.

As far as any relevant repairs, I had the catalytic converter replaced this past Friday (this repair was solely for emissions related issues...although the car now seems to idle a little better). Two days earlier, I had a brand new belt tensioner and belt put on, because the bolt holding the tensioner had somehow backed out and snapped the tensioner, throwing the belt off. It's been running perfectly fine since then, until today.

The only other issue ongoing issue I have with the car is the gas gauge. I usually only fill the tank half way. However, if I fill the tank completely, the gauge gets stuck on full, and won't float back until I am near empty. Don't know if that is related...but the main issue seems to be fuel related, so I thought it might be.

Any thoughts/opinions?

[SG007]

Did it make any kind of noise when it lost acceleration, like a knocking sound? That's exactly what my '92 did when I spun a bearing.

[hotrod_chevyz]

The power related problem could have been bad gas. If it runs fine now thats what i would be thinking. The rattle is best found with a scope but if its in the pulleys you can take the belt off and start the motor for a brief amount of time to see if the noise goes away.