BMW no acceleration and shaking

Not2Lucky
Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:51:35 +0000
Power/Fuel

I have a 1999 BMW 528i, I got used 4 years ago. In the last 2 months, I put on about 8K miles on it. Now it is up to 125K miles. I have been having two problems, I think are related, since they feel the same but I am not sure.

The first is that when I am on the highway and want to accelerate from say 40 to 60, I hit the gas and the car shudders as it tries to accelerate, it has done this for the last 4 months, occasionally, like once a week. The shudder feels like a piston is missing, it is a really hard, ongoing shake, the car will accelerate, slowly and then when I back off the gas the shudder will go away, and then I can accelerate without problem.

The second one happened for the second time on Friday. I tried accelerating, like above, however the shudders stayed for as long as I was pushing the gas peddle down. If I would let up from the peddle, to keep the car at a constant speed, it would be fine, but any acceleration would make it shake. I pulled over to the side of the road, turned the car off and on and I was fine I ziped back into traffic … For about 2 miles when it started again. I then pulled to an exit, went to a gas station, opened the hood, looked for the large switch that would say ?turn problems off?, but could not find the switch, so I filled up the tank (I was close to empty) and tried again, there were no problems for the remaining 40 miles back home. I am pretty sure that the last (and first) time this happened it was also low on gas, and turning the car off and going to a store made the problem go away.

When the shudder is sustained, the check engine light comes up, during the problem, but does not stay on after I turn off and on the car.

My thoughts are that this is a gas getting to the piston problems, and that it could be a fuel pump, fuel line or computer problem. Could this be a tran$mi$$on thing?.. I am not sure I want to put more money into this car?

Any ideas?

N2L

10 posts - 7 participants