# harder than before to accelerate. ask for help



## thewestwing (Sep 2, 2007)

Hey guys, I have a 1998 Nissan Altima GXE 4-speed automatic. Now it has 87K miles. 

It ran great in the past 3 months during which I have two 1K-mile long trips. However, since late July, I find it harder to accelerate from still and the engine runs a little bit faster than before. When I tried to accelerate from 0 to 30mph, it took me about 30% longer of time than before. And when I got the speed of 40mph and tried to accelerate for higher, it seemed really hard and the engine noise went up. And the engine speed stayed still at 2000rpm, no change at all until I got a speed of 55mph while the engine speed will suddenly went up to around 2300 rpm. After I accelerated to 65mph and chose cruise control, the engine speed will maintain at around 2300 rpm. And if I then want to get to 70 or 75 mph, it seemed a little bit easier to accelerate. I am really confused by this. It seems that my engine suffers from a loss of power. I supposed that the problem may be due to the spark plugs and valve cover gasket. So I asked the mechanic to replace them days ago. However, the situation remains the same.

Here I attach the maintenance record since this April when I bought this car. The mechanic once recommended me to change the distributor cap, rotor, and wire set. I am not sure whether it is necessary, especially I doubt whether the wire set needs to be replaced.

Any advice will be appreciated. Thank you all.


I bought it this April and have done the following maintenance recently:
1. regularly change the oil and filter (twice since this April)
2. change the fuel filter (April)
3. all the coolant changed (April)
4. change 4 spark plugs (several days ago)
5. replace valve cover gasket (several days ago)


and yet the mechanic recommend me to do the following stuff (haven't done yet) when I bought this car with 82K miles in April:
1. replace the distributor cap, rotor, wire set
2. change left-front drive AXLE


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## smj999smj (Jan 1, 2006)

It really could be any of a lot of differant possibilities. They did have some problems with ignition wires shorting to the spark plug tubes on occassion. Might be worth pulling the ignition wires out of the spark plug tubes for inspection, checking for white pinholes in the boot as well as for oil or water present inside the tube. If you replace any ignition parts, stick with genuine Nissan or NGK parts. 

Some other possibilities are low fuel pressure, clogged air filter, clogged catalytic converter, oil leak into the distributor, weak ignition coil, throttle position sensor issue, to name just a few. A scantool may be needed to help diagnose the problem if the basic checks turn up empty.


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