Alero Having Acceleration Problems

[Fuzzyspudkiss]

for a while now i have noticed that when i take off from a stop my alero kind of hesitates, but it wasn't very noticeable so i thought it might just be me trying to find something wrong...

Well today i pulled onto the highway and accelerated from 40 mph just to see if she was missing and turns out that she is. After about 3500 rpms she does this weird jumpy type acceleration. It was so bad once that my car was moving back and forth while the pedal was down. It does it at other RPMs also but it is surefire after about 3500.

I took a video in the video i am flooring my pedal (i dont do this normally but i was testing) the second time especially you can tell the jumping because it jumps from like 3500 to 3750 and then from 3750 to 4000 but not smooth at all, in leaps.

My cruise control button also stopped working about the same time...I am not sure that this is connected but i thought i would mention it. My guess is that i need new spark plugs because i don't think they have ever been changed and it has 89,777 miles, is this long for stock plugs? Maybe tranny oil, i dont think it has ever been changed either...but it says SES not SVS so i would think it would be engine related...

Here is the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4kUJIlGPk4

My car is a 2001 Oldsmobile Alero GLS 3.4L V6

Thank you

[colonel6632]

check your plugs and wires for a first step. if your wires are cracked or broken they'll do that

[Fuzzyspudkiss]

Ok, i'll go do that now...

[Fuzzyspudkiss]

a couple more interesting facts, she revs up fine in park(no problems at all smooth as laxative), and also in first she does fine except for the take off like i said before. It seems that only in second (or above i did not test any of the gears above second because i was on public roads) that it has the major problems. She also starts within one second of cranking most of the time.

I check the spark plug wires and they seemed fine, haven't checked the plugs yet because my engine is pretty hot right now. But i checked the front three before and they had some sort of blue corrosion on them but it wasn't astoundingly bad.

[colonel6632]

There isn't any load when your rev in neutral. So since the wires weren't too bad maybe that's why it only happens sometimes under load. If you can afford new wires I'd probably buy new ones.

But let's see if other people chime in.

[Fuzzyspudkiss]

fyi, I took my car to autozone a while back to get the SES light checked out. The code that was being given was "Misfire on cylinder 6", pretty much the most generic code (thanks Ninja).

Well, i take out the cylinder 6 spark plug that night and I look at it. Turns out the spark plug is cracked in two lines from the top down to the bottom of the plug. Here's a pick of one crack in the plug. (kinda blurry, taken with phone)
http://i769.photobucket.com/albums/xx333/FuzzySpudkiss/Alero/Photo0127-1.jpg

Anyways, replaced all 6 spark plugs and 2 plug wires (replaced the plug wire on cylinder 6 just in case and the plug wire on cylinder 2 broke because it was stuck on the old plug) and presto she runs and accelerates like a youngan again :).

Just thought i would update you guys, it seems like the problem had a very simple fix :)

[[ion] C2]

Yup happened to me too a while ago.

http://ion-productions.com/crackedPlug.jpg