My wife has an 03 Protege and after a brief warm-up period, the car will stall, or nearly stall when accelerating from a stop. Whitish smoke comes out of the tailpipe, the car shakes violently, the RPMs dip, check engine light comes on, and acceleration is slow going. It's a crap shoot if it will stall, or power through it.

A few months ago it did this and we cleaned the fuel system and replaced the ignition coils, plugs, and wires. No problems until this week and it is back with a vengeance. The car is nearly undriveable due to the fact that every stop sign and light is now a hazard.

Any similar experiences and (hopefully) solutions out there?

 

Is the CEL on? What are the codes? How many miles on the car?

 

CEL is on only when attempting to stall. No codes. About 140k miles.

 

White smoke from the tailpipe could indicate that coolant gets into the combustion chamber. I see 2 possibilites for this:
1. Headgasket failure.
2. Most cars (I am not 100% sure about your protege) have a coolant loop to the throttle body. A leak there could put coolant in the IM.

The violent shaking is caused my misfires. Beyond coolant in the combustion chamber misfires could have 1001 reasons. I.e. A bad valve cover gasket could allow oil to get into the spark plug tunnels and cause misfires.
bad crankshaft sensor.
Clogged catalytic converter.
Alternator failing.
Bad ground connections.
Lean running: check if the air intake hose has cracks. Take the hose out and bend it to see if cracks are present. These cracks widen when the engine rocks as you try to accelerate. The resulting vacuum leak could cause misfires. Quick fix for this: wrap the intake hose with duct tape.
Check for other vacuum leaks.


If the CEL light came on there should be a freeze frame record of it in the memory.