Have you ever changed your plugs? I had a similar problem last winter after my car was in someone's driveway idling for about 30 minutes. I had cranked the heater and let my car warm up...really cold out. The car drove fine for about 20 minutes then drove almost like an older big block with the butterfly stuck on the carb, shaking violently and running waaaay rich (smelled a lot of gas) and seeming like it wanted to stall when trying to go. It ended up the wires had gone bad and the spark was arching out of the top of the wire, down the chamber and arching to the plug. You can imagine what that did to the plugs....look like a BBQ gone bad. I replaced the wires and plugs and was good to go just like new.
Just a thought.

 

no black smoke. Plugs and wires are getting changed when the car gets out of the shop. I dropped my car off at a friends house, and took my girlfriend's car back to college for the next two weeks. My friend took it from his house to the body shop this afternoon and called me (less than 2 hours after I dropped it off) and said it was running fine, and no CEL. I guess it was just bad gas and it finally cycled through. I'm feeling better now wink.gif I think I was only smelling gas that hadn't really burned off... the exhaust wasn't black and it wasn't a very strong smell of gas, but more so than the usual exhaust smell.

How often are you supposed to change your plugs/wires anyways?

 

Glad to hear it all cleared up Man... Stuff like that is worrisome.

 

Yeah, me too.

majik, I am on my third set of plugs and second set of wires including factory and I am almost at 100,000 miles so unless you are supposed to do it more, not too often. laugh.gif