Car Advice or Shop Advice

Hey everyone! I moved to Dallas in January and about a month ago bought my first Miata. It is a 1994 M-Edition and I love it so far. I'll throw up some pics when I get around to the Introductions post. This last week I have been having some problems with the car though unfortunately. I definitely don't have a lot of mechanical know-how so I thought maybe y'all here would (or be able to direct me to a good shop to take my car to at least). The car was running fine when I got it and this just recently popped up. Pardon my non-technical terms. :)

The Miata drives with very low power, I can feel it trying to give itself power when I give it gas but it isn't taking it. It's like a hot air balloon with the burners on and all the air is going out the top (quite a manly analogy I know). It occasionally shakes; especially while idle and feels like it may stall out. Generally when I get to the higher gears it has less of a problem with the shaking but still not a lot of power. The Check Engine light is not always on but usually turns itself on if I drive it for too long. This is supposed to be my daily driver so I really need to figure out what is wrong with it so I hope you guys can help.

I have changed the spark plugs and wires so far and truthfully probably lack the ability to do too much else myself. Does anyone have any ideas as to what this could be? If not if there are any good shops that you guys would recommend that I could take this thing into next week I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Glad to find a fun-looking community here!

From your balloon analogy, my question for you is does the engine rev up, but the car doesn't go?

Check out this link for the Check Engine Light. http://www.miata.net/garage/faultcodes.html Let us know what the code is.

If you are in Dallas, Track Dog Racing is your best bet.

If you are in the Fort Worth area, Miata Solutions is the place to go.

Oh, welcome to the forum.

I appreciate the quick response. No the car will still drive, it just seems to use maybe a quarter of the power it should.

Thanks for the fault code tip, I'll try that next.

Track Dog it is!

Another vote for track dog or miata solutions. Both are great.

Welcome and sorry for your woes, hope you get it sorted out. At least you have some great Miata shops nearby. Gary at Track Dog Racing is always really helpful, wish I had those options for a local shop. :chug:

If its running that poorly, you should avoid Driving it. Your symptoms remind me of a clogged catalytic converter.

So I was able to run the Self Diagnostics which revealed an issue with the Mass Airflow sensor. After reading about some of the symptoms of that it seems to make perfect sense. Is that something someone with limited know-how like myself could fix or should I head over to Track Dog? I'll probably go over there sooner than later anyways as it looks pretty cool!

So you want someone on the internets who you don't know to estimate your level of limited know how??

If you think the repair is in your wheelhouse attempt to fix it, if it isn't take it to Track Dog.

Since I know nothing about you when I spun the wheel of guessing it landed on take it to Track Dog.

Welcome to MME!

I just pulled an MAF off a '94 if you need one.