when it started chugging the guages dimmed a little bit as it chugged along. other than that no twitchy guages or low or high

 

Dimming may be the result of low charging system voltage. I suspect that when it started "chugging", the dash dimmed and the "check gauges" light flashed, the volt meter was dipping into the red. Keep an eye on it.

 

i didnt notice anything on the volt meter but everything else did happen... any ideas of how to fix?

 

Start the car up and put a voltmeter on the battery. See how many volts you are getting. If your not reading at least 13.5V, your going to likely need an alternator, or possibly cables, sometimes when they crack/corrode, you have charging issues. Alot of systems charge in the upper 13V-14.2V range. Im trying to remember about what my car charges at.

And if the car happens to have underdrive pulleys on it, that will cause charging issues at idle. So if thats the case, you might need to give it a little throttle to see what kinda charging voltage your getting from the alternator.

With the car off, you should read at least 12.5Volts.

 

just don't go 90 mph

 

Ideally, yes on most streets you shouldn't be going 90, but the fact that it shouldn't be having those symptoms indicates a problem, and it shouldn't just simply be ignored.