Hi,

I am in the very unfortunate postion of having just purchased a car
that quickly decided to die on me. I'm in the process of investigating
my options under the lemon law in the state where I purchased the
vehicle, but I'm 300 miles away from the dealer and actually like the
car. If it's something minor, I'd prefer to fix it and keep the car.

Here's the situation. I purchased a 95 Cougar with the 4.6L V-8 from a
dealership on eBay. Given the distance, I didn't have the option of
taking it for a test drive before the auction closed. I asked the
dealer if the car would be OK for the 300 mile trip. He assured me it
would be fine.

Upon getting the car and driving it initially, I felt like it wasn't
accelerating like it should for a car with that engine. By comparison,
my wife's van with a V-6 could outperform it. Other than that, however,
it seemed to take the first 250 miles back home fine. My wife drove the
car the last leag o the trip, and told me that the last thirty miles or
so it didn't seem to be accelerating like it should. This AM, I tried
to drive it to work. I went about two miles down a country road and it
felt very anemic (sp?). I came to the end of the road where I had to
make a left onto a busy highway from a stop sign. This required heavy
acceleration. I got through the turn and the engine came up to about 3K
RPM. The engine made a noise I wasn't comfortable with, kind of a
rattle, for about 3 seconds, then the bottom dropped out, the RPM
dropped to around 1K, and the engine will bog out under anything
heavier than that. The idle as rough, and will stall out. There's
nothing about the sound of the engine itself that is worrisome. With a
little gass I can hold it at about 1K RPM constantly, and it sounds
fine. There's no obvious misfire like I've dropped a cylinder, or
anything.

My first thought, aside from the uncomfortable noise right before the
problem, was that the gas gauge might be wrong, and the car was running
out of gas. I was right at a gas station, so I put a couple gallons in.

Obviously, that didn't do anything. However, it clearly indicates the
nature of the symptoms. At this point I'm considering fuel delivery and
timing as the major suspects, however, my question that given the acute
onset of the problem, what other causes should I be looking at?

Thanks,

Tom Young