Well when cold the car goes well.
I live in a hilly part of Sydney, about 500 m from home there is a tee junction where I then have to go steeply up a hill.
When doing this from stone cold, transmission shifts into 2nd gear and pulls smoothly up the hill.

When warm, an absolutely huge flat spot occurs, car sounds flat, absulutely no go. Then suddenly whoosh, power back. This is on a moderate throttle, not nearly as bad if I floor it.
Done approx 160,000 Kms, regularly serviced etc etc.
Any ideas??
Gerry

Trans is slipping. A common thing on the 3rd gen autos which im assuming your car is?

He didn't mention anything about a slip of the trans. He said it was a flat dead spot, then the car responds.

Could be as always the oxygen sensor, given its ok on cold, then flat spots, could be flooding when its warm etc. Any smoke (ie black smoke) coming out of exhaust on the whoosh?

Trans is slipping. A common thing on the 3rd gen autos which im assuming your car is?

I doubt it, if it was slipping then revs would go up, but OP indicated that car feels "flat" meaning it wont rev & struggles under load... Really few things to look at, when was the last time major service was done, things like plugs, leads & so on?


He didn't mention anything about a slip of the trans. He said it was a flat dead spot, then the car responds.

Could be as always the oxygen sensor, given its ok on cold, then flat spots, could be flooding when its warm etc. Any smoke (ie black smoke) coming out of exhaust on the whoosh?

Yes could be the o2 as when the engine is cold o2 is not used. So definitely look into that......

O2 sensor for sure , had same issues with my sons TE and we did it all with no results until we swapped out the O2 sensor .I actually used a toyota sensor after rewiring it to magna plug . All good now and been this way for 8 months now