My New Cts Is Suddenly Sluggish

[accylad]

My 4 week old CTS has suddenly gone very sluggish accelerating. I filled her up with petrol yesterday (from the garage I normally use) and noticed a distinct fall off in acceleration over the last 2 days. Its seems to come and go, but tonight the acceleration definately tailed off at about 4500 rpm and the lift hardly kicked in at all (it seemed to pick up around 7000 rpm but nothing like it has been doing). The car has done just over 900 miles and for the first 550 or so I drove it like a nun. Since then I've been putting my foot down a bit to try to ease the engine in. I certainly haven't thrashed it, or hit the rev limiter.

My worry is that I remember reading on the Celica forum (when I had mine) about certain problems with the VVTL-i engine and loss of power. I was wondering if anyone else had come across this ? I suspect its dirty petrol, so put some redex in the tank in case one or more of the injectors is clogged, but I can't be sure.

Anyone got any ideas ?

Cheers

Accylad

[eep2nw]

Have you been using Shell Optimax???? I filled mine up with it yesterday and probably had the same experiences. Guess that ron98 is a little too 'rich' and ron97 is good enough......

[accylad]

No, just plain old 95 ron Esso.

I think it was just a bad tank of petrol, probably near the nottom when I filled it up. A couple of days on it was fine and I've filled up again since and no problems.

As a matter of interest, hows your fuel economy ? Mine's averaged 27 mpg since new ! :ffs:

Cheers

Accylad

[eep2nw]

I've had mine filled up with 97 so far and I'm getting around 33mpg combined. I'm doing about weekdays in the city and the motorway during weekends; plus the fact that I always try to get the 'lift' sensation once each time I'm behind the wheel...

I compensate for this by gear changes at 2000rpm for the fuel economy later.... this is where most automatics change gears at....

I think you may get better mpg when you switch to 97, but also a little more to pay. But you can feel and hear that the engine's running a little more smoother.

Oh, before I forget, bent valves may also cause a drop in performance at the lower rpms and speeds... but I don't think that could be a case for the 2zzge engine....

[Aphelion]

Hey

I noticed this today also, just didn't seem as perky as usual, just filled it up with 97 oct super unleaded from esso, was way down on grunt, did you have any luck with that redex stuff, used to work a treat in one of my old cars?

Could i just be getting too used it the lift effect

[exon16m]

i have noticed a lack of proformance so i put in some Shell optimax which seemed to do the trick

[Treuno]

All ways run optimax! Its good stuff! Dont forget mind that the lift dont start until just after 6000rpm and it dont work unless the car is up to its perfect temperature!

[eep2nw]

Oh, I've also noticed something about 'lift' control. If you're to take control the throttle and take it up to 6000rpm gradually, you wouldn't feel the lift kicking in. The interesting part comes in when you do a throttle on anywhere in the lift-zone to pump in more fuel, the lift kicks in. Don't try this at roundabouts else vsc starts beeping.

Alternatively, being heavy-footed right from the start would also bring in the lift at 6000rpm, but the control wouldn't be there, especially when you need it at corners...

This engine really kicks!!! Great stuff the toyota engineers have created since the 4AGE block..... if only they would build another rwd rolla with this engine on it as a commemorative to the rwd AE86 rolla..... hopefully they might do it in '06 which is exactly 20yrs....