While trying to pass a car to my right, during mid-level acceleration, my engine experienced uncontrolled acceleration from 40mph to 70mph before I could respond and turn the ignition to the off position, killing the engine. This is the fourth time this has happened to me in two years. The first time was under hard acceleration while trying to merge into traffic. The engine red-lined and I had to put the cat in neutral and shut off the ignition. The next three time I experienced this was during moderate to light acceleration in passing cars between the speeds of 35mph and 45 mph. I have eliminated the floor mat as a cause for this. I have the anchor and grommet type mat that cannot slide forward. My fear is that a less experienced driver would have crashed in any of these four occurrences.

- Berlin, NJ, USA

During idle speed, car shuts off below 1,000 rpms and has to be re-started. During startup, car does not crank until about the third time it is turned over. Thought at first that this was due to bad gas. So I finished running tank out with heet, filled it up with gas from a different company and it is still doing the same thing. It is not gas. It does tie into the delivery of the fuel or the ignition of the car with is possibly a sensor problem. There are sensors that are not tied into the computer and relays and do not show up with the check service light. This same problem happened last month, but then re-occurred during this month more than once and the most recent was yesterday, 10/06/06. It is only getting worse. Something is wrong with the engine or the sensors. I have given the service department various ideas, since the engine light is not on, as to what could be causing it. They told me that if there was no light on in the car then it was my problem because they need a service engine light on in the car. It is not the gas that I have put in my car. I run 87 octane from shell. I have never had a problem with gas from shell. Also, the fuel gauge system in the car sticks and shows empty and bounces from empty to full to half-full for my tank and the miles per empty gauge on my display meter jumped from 5 miles to empty to 300 miles to empty down to 150 miles to empty.

- Perry, GA, USA