So everytime i drive my car and i just start up and drive normally, my car has some weird feeling to it. I work in a area where i cant make a lot of noise or go over 35 (cops all over) so i usually drive easy as can be. But i have noticed this sensation of something dragging. like something is trying to hold my car back from forward motion. its really hard to discribe. but i can recreate this but slowly accelerating and watching my boost gauge. once i get around -3 to 0 vac but not in boost the sensation comes back. i have checked my plugs, changed my plugs, checked my wires and nothing there. no codes, and not a bad batch of fuel. always 93. i was recently tuned at TurboTrix and when i was there i was told that i must have had a bad tank of gas in it (I hate Jersey pumping it for me). mark said he was pulling timing and still nothing. we added race gas to it and it seemed a bit better. but my numbers were still really low, about 35awhp lower than before. i am wondering if this is related or not. any advice on what i should do before i contact TT, drive over an hr and them take 5 minutes to fix it.

 

I'm also getting a hesitation at times, but my issues sound more complex. Perhaps ther is some relationship to to recent service work that was performed. I just had my AC compressor replaced (under warranty- just under 60K) and the 60K service including timing belt replacement. Pretty much all my belts and fluids were replaced as well (I have to check the service slip to know exactly). Anyway after I picked up the car everything seemed fine, but I started hearing a faint "knock" and sometimes a "knock" "knock" kinda like a strap hanging outside the car door and hitting the door intermittently. Also about 10 minutes down the highway a puff of blue smoke came out of the hood vent and I swear simultaneously through the interior air vents. I smelled a semi-sweet odor of perhaps AC refrigerant and then the AC really started blowing cold for a while. Over the next few days I started to get a periodic hesitation while driving with little to no boost and keeping the tach steady. It feels like a gentle downshift that jerks you forward very slightly and then the engine runs back to normal with less resistance. I have noticed that the hot and humid weather seem to correlate to both the knocking and the hesitation, but I'm not sure if they relate.

I got an over the phone idea from the dealer service rep via a conversation he had with a tech. Despite the fact that they just replaced the AC the tech felt that the knocking could be a missing tooth in my rear axle or the new fluid in my center diff was justing resetting. They said the hesitation might be the ABS kicking on slightly for some reason and that I should bring the car in when I got a chance. I planned to bring it in a few days later but the weather turned colder (upper 60's to low 70's) and both the knocking and hesitation went away. When the weather changed back to 80's and humid the issues came back. I took it back to the dealer finally and left it with them for a week while on vacation. Of course they "could not duplicate" and I had to pick the car up after my vacation without anything checked on done. The service rep said I should come back so I can test drive it with a tech so they issues can be conveyed properly. I plan to do this soon. In lower gears the car really sucks to drive with the transmission sometimes being slow or jerky in engagement. Sometime the clutch can be let right out and it will be smooth. Other times I ease the clutch out and let the tranny catch and it still jerks. Othertime the car drives fine. In general I'm curious if Evo's just have raw transmissions in stock form and the clamping force of the clutch makes for a head jerking ride. This is another complaint I have about the Evo but I'm adding it here because the jerkiness of the tranny is worse with these new issues mentioned above.

I will plan to give you an update on the dealers conclusion about the hesitation. If any of my other issues sound familar to you and you have any ideas please let me know.

Thanks

PS. Recent research had me thinking that my BOV was leaking and causing the hesitation, but I don't know.