My S has not been accelerating as smoothly lately. Sometimes when I accelerated from the on ramp to highway speed, my car would start bouncing back and forth at around 5-6k rpm. The feeling was similar to hitting the 9k rev limiter. Only if I eased up a bit on the throttle, and reapplied the throttle would the engine rev passed the 6k rpm range into vtec smoothly. Otherwise, the car would just keep bouncing back and forth, accelerating very roughly and slowly. I found this problem happened most often when I accelerated hard on 3rd gear. However, I was unable to replicate this problem consecutively. It would happen only once a day, but it kept coming back once in a while, which was pretty annoying!!

At first I was thinking this might be due to the 6k cutoff when the engine was cold, but this problem occurred time and again when the engine had seen 3 bars for some time. I am at a loss as to what might be causing this.

To provide some more background info, my car had the TSB54/55 and spark plugs done. This problem occurred well after I had these done to my S though.

Does anyone know what might be the cause of this? Anyone had any similar experience?

 

Sounds like the MAP sensor. If your car is still under warranty (I know not likely, but it may be under the extended emissions warranty, check the manual) it should be easy for them to diagnose and fix. Some people have "fixed" it themselves by unpluging the molex and plugging it back in. In some cases they gave it a few taps (I know, not to scientific....) and that cleared up the problem. Try a search on MAP.

 

Also check your oiil level.

 

Sounds like a map sensor to me. Give it a few taps and see if it goes away.