Hey yall! Im looking to buy a 98 2.0 but before i pull the trigger, i want to find the answer to this sputtering problem. i started the car and gave it a quick look over while it warmed up and the car idled and backed out of the driveway just fine. we get on the road and stick it in drive and as we take off it starts jerking and sputtering as we accelerate. now under a moderate to hard acceleration the car runs perfectly fine. but only under slight acceleration/cruising does it jerk and sputter. i take pride in working on all my own cars although none volvos. looking to go pick up the car tomorrow if i think its only a small issue to deal with when i get it back home. any suggestions as to what could be causing this cause it is stumping me?? any help would be appreciated. thanks!

 

Could be a number of things. Preformance issues usually surface a WOT not at a light throttle. What model car is it? I'm guessing that you are in Euro because the USA doesn't have any 2.0 motors. (Why doesn't anyone put their location anymore???).

First guess is vacuum, 2nd would be spark plug gap, 3rd would be fuel delivery problem. Not much different from other cars. Does it have a CEL? I would take a code reader and check that.