alright i was driving down the road yesterday morning and iwas going about 30 mph...i have an automatic and i powershifted down to 2nd gear cause i was gonna coast...as soon as i did this my car starts backfiring like a **** and starts acting like its gonna run out of gas and starts rattling and shuts off..the thing is it had a full tank. i tried to crank it up and the first time it wont turn over...the second time it does for about 2 seconds then shuts off...would somebody please tell me what the heck this sounds like...i have never heard of anything like this before

 

uhm how do you powershift and auto?

 

Mods? What's been done to the car lately? Year of car?
First things suspect would be fuel pressure or optispark or something ignition related. Put a fuel gauge on and see what happens. Do some research on fuel pressure and opti spark issues. This board is chalked full of info.

 

Sounds like you lost the rotor in the opti. I am not sure what you did with the transmission, since power shifting is totally something else and done with a manual.

 

the only thing that's been done to my car so far is a flowmaster muffler i put it on about a month ago...and its a 94..that's what everyone has been saying is to check the fuel pressure...ive also heard the distributor too :/...i really hope it aint that but ill check the fuel pressure and see what happens first

 

sounds like something ignition related check your plugs, melted wires, opti, and coil. Like shoebox said sounds like something opti related if it just did it all of a sudden and is that extreme.

 

maybe you hit the rev limiter?

 

How high did the RPM go when you "powershifted down to second"? Sounds like you put your foot on the floor and pulled the lever into 2nd. Excessive RPM can damage many parts.

 

first of all im goin to answer all the questions about the power shifting..for those of you that have an auto you should know that there is a 1,2,d, over drive and a reverse..all i did was put it in second ..that is called power shifting..yes there is such thing as that in an automatic...another thing is..is that someone told me it could very well be the map sensor...isnt that located somewhere on top of the engine...i could not find it in the manual..but i think i may have found it by the way the guy described it

 

I've never heard anyone call that "powershifting", and I've been driving and wrenching on performance cars for almost 50 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powershift

 

yes the map sensor is the square black rectangle thing in back of the throttle body on top of the engine.

 

yea uh whoever you learned that from... is completely wrong.. powershifting is ONLY done in a manual transmission car.. what you did was simply manually down shift to second gear... not powershift in any way shape or form

 

alright...well thats not the point...i just want my car fixed...im just askin for suggestions i dont want it to turn into some boxing ring about a stupid term

 

well does the car run now and still have the problem or will it completely not start? When was the last time you changed your plugs? did you check to see if any spark plug wires were melted yet?

 

no it still has the same problem ive been working on it all morning...it started up for about 5 seconds at one point then shut off...it's like it's not getting enough fuel or something..it's the strangest thing..plus if the wires were bad would it start backfiring like it did...i mean it was bad it sounded like gunshots coming out my tailpipe lol