NineElevenLover

I've been noticing an issue with throttle response after starting my car (even when warm). It goes away after a bit of driving and seems to be the worst at low RPMs and low load. For example, shortly after starting my car, with the shifter in neutral, if I simply try to blip the throttle, the RPMs don't raise as they should. Instead, the engine stutters. This also prevents smooth acceleration when engaging the clutch and starting to roll off in 1st gear. After reving up to 3 grand in 1st and shifting into 2nd gear, there's also a stutter/pause before I get any power. My car is strong and pulls like a mule after driving for a short period of time. If this was something like plugs, wires, or coils, I'd think the problem would be manifesting itself all the time, especially under heavy load. Do you all have any ideas? Thanks.

After the car has warmed up, I'm hearing/feeling a clunking/knocking noise when turning the wheel at low speeds. The noise seems to be coming from the front passenger-side of the car. I guess it could be making the same noise at higher speeds, as well, but I'm not able to hear it. I'm pretty sure that this happens even when the car is NOT moving, which would rule out something like a CV-joint. I'll have to confirm this just to make sure I'm not lying to you all. Do you all have any ideas?

Thanks guys!

My friends and I rented out Capitol Raceway for the day, and I must say that we had a blast. I'm happy with my times, considering the temps were pretty high (ambient temp was ~86 degrees). My car, a 2003 X50, is totally stock in the power department (no tune, exhaust, or even K&N). I have 315/30/18 Michelin Pilot Sports in the rear, which were @ ~34 psi, and Bilstein PSS9 suspension. Here's my best run (click to enlarge)... And here's some video... Spectator view (sorry for the low volume)... I was extremely happy to find that the car exhibited virtually zero wheel-hop when launched from 4k-5k. I think I could have launched better with some more practice. I was shifting as fast as I could and, dayumn, it felt great. I really like this car. Here are all of my runs (without a passenger, at least) side-by-side: And here's a timeslip from my best run in my Dad's V8 Audi R8.

I just got back from an 11 hour round-trip visit to go see this car. I had to at least test drive the thing, or else I would have been constantly wondering if it was "the one that got away." I estimated that there was about a 50/50 chance I would be driving back in a Porsche. Once I arrived, I looked the car over; it was extremely well-kept, inside and out. The engine looked clean, and the only real issue was two scraped-up wheels. One wasn't horrible, but the other one was definitely substantial. Not so much a deep gouge, but a lighter scraping that extended almost the entire way around the edge of the wheel. I first let the car idle for about 5-10 minutes. It started immediately and the motor sounded very nice. It idled purrrrfectly and I was pretty impressed at this point. I took it for a nice and long 20 minute test drive, with a mix of city driving and highway driving. The engine felt nice; smooth and powerful, but a bit slower than my current 335xi. The car tracked straight and smooth, and everything felt pretty solid. Then the first problem arose: I was downshifting from 3rd to 2nd, clutch fully disengaged, perfect heel-toe rev-match, and the tranny made a grinding noise when I attempted to move the shifter into 2nd gear. That did not sit well with me at ALL. I kept driving and then the second, relatively minor issue became apparent: it was slightly difficult to get a smooth shift into 3rd gear. No grinding, but just not smooth engagement like the other gears. I kept on going for a few more miles, then needed to make one last u-turn before ending the the test drive. I was at a red-light which turned green, so I depressed the clutch pedal, shifted into 1st gear, and began to lift the clutch pedal to start moving. The instant the clutch started to engage, the shifter popped out of 1st gear into neutral. Ugh... Needless to say, I made the five and a half hour trip back home in the same truck I drove up in. I wasn't so much disappointed as I was relieved that the problems had manifested themselves, otherwise I may have made a very bad purchase. I feel as if I absolutely made the right decision here. Oh well, I'm sure there will be plenty more nice cars in the future.

I was ready to pull the trigger on this car and go pick it up tomorrow. It's a 2003 with only 9700 miles. http://www.cars.com/go/search/detail.jsp?tracktype=usedcc&csDlId=&csDgId=&listingId=55832326&listingRecNum=2&criteria=sf1Dir%3DDESC%26mkId%3D20081%26stkTyp%3DU%26mdId%3D20567%26rd%3D250%26crSrtFlds%3DstkTypId-feedSegId-mkId-mdId-prcId-trId%26zc%3D20171%26prcId%3D28569%26rn%3D0%26PMmt%3D1-1-1%26stkTypId%3D28881%26sf2Dir%3DASC%26sf1Nm%3Dprice%26sf2Nm%3Dmiles%26trId%3D25704%26rpp%3D50%26feedSegId%3D28705&aff=national The appointment had been set and it was essentially a done deal, pending a diagnostic check at a local Porsche dealership to pull the codes from the ECU to see if it had ever been moneyshifted. The results were quite unsettling.... Type 1 - 7830 Type 2 - 364 The tech who did the diagnostic inspection at the local dealership was telling me that it was no big deal. I called a couple local ones, however, that seemed to think it was rather significant. One, in particular, I called and spoke to the service manager. He seemed to think it was alright and I should go ahead with the purchase, but then he decided to put me on hold and speak with one of his techs/mechanics who was more familiar with the over rev codes. When he came back, he essentially said "I'm glad I went to ask my tech, because he seems to think it's a very high number and you're taking a big risk." That did not sit well with me at all. *sigh* I guess I'm no longer interested. So disappointing. :( I'm planning on modifying this quite heavily, so I must have a rock solid foundation from which to start. I moneyshifted a car of mine back in the day at the dragstrip, with no immediate resultant problems. About a year later, however, the engine had an absolutely catastrophic failure. I can only assume that it was caused, for the most part, by the moneyshift, as a rod bent and subsequently exploded almost the entire bottom end. What do you all think?