I Finally worked out why my car has been lacking power, missing constantly and just being sluggish in general.

i'd go get her tuned, and a week or so later she was missing again, a couple of times while driving - especially under high electrical load ie highbeams, stereo and aircon going...the headlights started to slowly glow brighter and weaker back and forth, anyway

driving along the other night, the electrical power disapeared and the car conked out, so i tried to restart it with no success so with the usual swearing and cursing i pushed it up a hill underneath a streetlight and popped the bonnet after a quick inspection i decided it was probably the dizzy.

Next day called the auto electrician out, he had a peek at the dizzy and said its putting out voltage, so he thought it may be the fuel pump and i got my car towed to his workshop, and later that day i got a phone call that my timing gear had gone, he asked me to come down and have a look at it, when i first saw it i couldnt believe it..the teeth on the gear in places were gone, and the rest were bent or chewed

so long story short, he replaced the timing gear...replaced the gear on the dizzy as a precaution, replaced my oil, replaced my transmission fluid, regassed my aircon, and upped my timing a couple of degrees..and the whole debarcle ended up costing me $520

ill see if i can take a couple of happy snaps of it, i couldnt believe it - my cars only done 173 thou kms

but shes back to her former glory now (better than when i bought her, the modifications ive done are actually apparent now!) , nice and responsive and plenty of torque although im going to be forking out for rear tyres if i dont start taking off at the lights a little more passively.

but i just thought i'd share this with you all, incase anyone else is having similar problems.. it might be another thing to look into if you cant find the fault elsewhere