Need to fix before something fails Options

[stevend914]

During my recent travels to Texas, California, and Route 66 Rallye I noticed a bit of a hiccup while driving - the engine has a drop in power but immediately is back to full power. I noticed the same thing on my trip to Wisconsin this past Thursday. However on Saturday during a rather spirited drive in SW Wisconsin, the engine stopped and after pressing harder on the accelerator pedal with no results, I drifted to the side of the road. On the second try at restarting, the engine fired up and I was able to drive off and had no further issues (ok, I did a 180 degree spin at one hairpin curve). Anyway, I'm driving back to STL on Sunday and after driving 300 miles all of a sudden I have no power on Interstate 55. So after hitting the accelerator pedal again with no results I start drifting over to the right lane and get ready to stop on the shoulder of the highway...but after drifting for 5 seconds or so, the car restarted and had no further problems for the remaining 130 miles home. My question is, does anyone know what the problem is, I'd like to fix it before it fails completely!! Thanks

[IronHillRestorations]

Check the obvious first.

Air; is there something restricting air flow, take the top off the air filter housing and give it a visual.

Spark; you can get a cheap spark tester to plug inline that will let you know if you're getting fire.

Fuel; this is more involved as the first thing I like to check is fuel pressure.

Next thing I'd check is trigger points; whenever someone has FI problems I always say "trigger points". It's not always the case but you'd be surprised how often they are over looked, and they don't last forever. I don't remember the resistance test values, but I had a fellow teener passing through that died about 40 miles from here, and everything checked out until we got to the trigger points which were bad.

I'm no FI guru, and was always intimidated by it (especially the AFC on my '74 1.8). Years ago one of the guys (James Thoruson) on the popular 914 website of the day started making FI testers. Ninefourtronics FI tester is what he called it, and that thing has saved me time and trouble.