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thanks so much! i'll definitely try all of these suggestions this weekend

oh yeah.. that was the other one. the same friend that replaced all my spark plugs, messed around with the timing for hours. pretty much had no effect. he works on cars for a living (mainly alignments on big trucks), but couldn't figure it out.

i would have already tried taking it to a repair shop ...

ok.. my apologies if i am posting this incorrectly. i read over all the rules to this site.. i tried searching through the forums on here first, and the closest thread that matched my problem was entitled "electrical, or deeper?" ..what he described that his car is doing is very similar to mine, BUT ...