I have posted several times on here trying to get my protege running again and everyone has given me spot on advice so I am back again with yet another problem. After replacing several things and putting God knows how many hours into the car, I thought I finally got it back to running right. Well like every time before, I was wrong. It cranks and idles fine and if you slowly give it gas, it will rev all the way up to redline, yet if you push the pedal to the floor, it will only rev to around 1500 to 1600 RPM and bounces around at that point. It also sounds like the engine wants to die and sometimes makes a popping noise. Not a back fire I don't think, but a less violent popping noise. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what this may be or what I need to do to correct it? I haven't tried driving it yet because we have had ice where I live but I hope to try and drive it around the neighborhood next week and see how that goes.

 

in my opinion any popping sound coming out of the exhuast is a backfrie small or big, but it almost sounds like a fuel problem to me what year is the car?

 

It is a 1997. I have replaced the fuel pump and fuel filter. Is there anything else that I should check dealing with the fuel or fuel delivery? I mean I know that there are also the fuel injectors... could they be the cause of the problem?

 

is your car over heating?

 

I have not been able to drive it in quite a while so i don't know if it is overheating or not. I know it never overheated when I was driving it everyday before the problems started and I have let it sit and run for a while a few times and it has never overheated then.

 

check your spark plugs my guess is they look like they have alot of build up even if you have changed them cause if they were gaped even the slightest off it would cause the backfireing it happened on my friends car his spark plugs could not run regular fuel properly they could only work on premium or else the car would back fire. it would also make sense with the reving cause if they can't burn the fuel fast enough fuel would build up in the cylinders and cause the massive explosions aka backfireing..

 

Does your car have vtcs maybe some screws and flaps are dancing in head or combustion chamber happen to me for a while or maybe clogged cat?

 

Reading the thread I thought I had an idea for OP to try. Then I realized it was almost 10 years old.