The longer from battery reset the more sluggish

I've noticed this problem for a while. When I first reset my battery the car runs great. The power, acceleration and smoothness are fine. With time, however, my car begins to run worse. I notice it most on slight acceleration. When pulling away from a light or something of the sort (Regular driving not accelerating hard), the car feels like it's tied to a post. Just kind of like the car is real heavy and it doesn't want to get going.

I also notice that when I'm up to speed, if I roll into the gas slowly I get the same feeling until I hit WOT. When I hit WOT the cars power and acceleration are exactly how it should be and the car takes off. It's almost like the feeling when you hit the nitrous button (No nitrous hooked up on this car. I was just using that as a reference point). Basically, It's like night and day when I go from part throttle to WOT. It's not the usual smooth increase in power like right after I reset the battery.

I'm just wondering what your guys ideas are as to what might cause this. Whatever thoughts you have are greatly appreciated.
- Justin

All of your guys thoughts are greatly appreciated. I haven't had a tune done and there really aren't any major modifications. Up until this point I only have bolt-ons. Also I never get a check engine light and the O2's aren't brand new but were replaced a little while back.

The TPS thought is something I considered too. I've checked the voltage though and it seems okay. If this is holding me back at all though, I have all new upper and lower intake, elbow, and throttle body sitting my garage. They will be going on soon and will surely get rid of that concern if it is affecting anything (I just don't really like throwing on new parts when I'm trying to remedy a problem though).

For those of you that don't know I work at a Toyota dealership. I took some time today and talked to a mechanic. Even though he may not be an expert on Ford's I value his opinion. His first guess was that the EGR may be going out. His recommendation was to pull off the vacuum line and see what happens. The car seemed to run quite a bit better. It's still pretty recent after the battery reset but the car felt very strong after I removed it and very smooth throughout slow acceleration. I'm going to drive it like that for a few days and if it seems better I will probably replace the EGR. This might even help remedy a bit of pinging I experience at times.

Thank you for all your thoughts. If you guys have any other ideas please chime in or any thoughts on the EGR's contribution are welcome. Thanks.
- Justin

Well tonight I threw a new gasket on the egr valve. I also took some time to fix a vac line that was running to something in the egr system that I suspected was leaking (Figured you were probably right Hissin). The car seems to run very well now even with the vac line connected at the egr. I think that vac line leaking further down the system from the EGR may have done the trick. I also had a slight bucking that seems to have gone away and the acceleration seems much more responsive. I'll let you all know how it runs after a couple weeks. Thanks for all the input.
- Justin

final5-0 said:

I usually wanna a make prob WAY more complicated than it really is

Click to expand...

It may not be that. It may be that we often times operate on the principle that something as simple and stupid would not be overlooked.

The funny thing is, I've known that line's connection had stretched and was kind of getting bad but I didn't think much of it. Then after I replaced the gasket on the EGR and thought about what Hissin said I took a grand total of 3 minutes to fix it. We'll see how she runs today.
- Justin