My daughter is having some problems with her "5 year old" coupe. I can't help much because my Saturn is 12 yo, is a station wagon, is white, and has a stick shift. In her own words:
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The vehicle, a rather small coupe less than five years old, has had one previous unknown owner. The dealer, of course, fed Diane the line about "She was just an old lady, always drove it real slow like..." and she bought it hook line and sinker. I"m a bit skeptical. The engine has a bad habit of skipping/stuttering when coming out of a standstill, and the gears (Automatic) don't always mesh perfectly when it shifts. Neither one's been that frequent, but today...and it's a balmy 45 outside, with plenty of idling time so I know the engine was warm, it made an awful high pitched buzz/whine starting from a stoplight up a slight incline. It sounded like a small electric motor without enough load.
Somewhat startled, I picked a back road and managed to get the incident to repeat itself on a downslope, this time without even a complete stop. It was lower pitched and slower, but still unnatural.
My guess is the carberoator needs clearing? Any other theories? We recently put a tank of Premium gas into the car to try and clear out the stuttering problem. It takes a rather firm push on the gas to make it buzz like that, but not enough to 'jackrabbit' the car.
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Any help or ideas greatly appreciated