Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan View Post
When you have this loss of power event upon taking off from a stand still, what do the engine RPMs do?

Meaning, when you give it gas to get going, do the RPMs rev high and yet you aren't getting anywhere yet? Or do they stay pretty low even though your foot is pressing on the gas and the car should be picking up speed?

I have had experiences on my own car like this. It was two different things though. The plugged trans filter was starving the transmission of fluid and so even though I was giving it lots of gas, it just had no oomph and wouldn't go anywhere. The RPMs went way up in this case. I would shut the car off (which I think would let the plugged filter relax momentarily and allow some fluid by) and then when I turned it on again, I got going for at least another few blocks. I changed the filter and this never happened again.

Years before that though, and before I did any work on the shift computer, it was changing gears erratically. I later realized one of the governor leads was melted after laying on top of the exhaust crossover pipe. A test you can do to see if the computer is at fault or not, is to pull the fuse for the shift computer and see how it behaves. The default gear when there is no electrical power to the shift computer is supposed to be 3rd gear. What it feels like when you only have the 3rd and final gear in a DeLorean, is that the car will have no power leaving from a stand still. The car will eventually be okay once you creep up to highway speeds, but will feel like there is next to no power while driving at low speeds in that 3rd gear. Don't drive it like this any longer than you need to to confirm where there problem is. Good troubleshooting test though and easy to do.
Thanks! Good call on the RPMs. I’ll take a look at that next time I’m out.