Any insights welcome!
When I accelerate the car makes a loud pronounced fluttering sound and hovers (as in won't accelerate). The car smells like gas and my gas mileage is 217 kms to the tank (before this last fill up it was 455kms to the tank. My friend who works on the car can't find anything wrong with it. It has an error code of 1130 (the A/F sensor Bank 1 Sensor 1) but this seems a little extreme, there must be something else going on. It doesn't heat up and albeit is a slow ride, doesn't stall (but if you asked it, it wants to)

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Welcome to the Club.

Having trouble understanding about the no acceleration.

What this sounds to me like is an exhaust leak somewhere and/or hesitation.

That particular sensor is behind the engine block and is the more likely of the two to fail first. The longer you let that sensor go, the worse the gas mileage will get.

 

My friend who works on the car says he has never seen anything like it, it is extreme! He has had 3 lexuses of different ilks and services most of the neighbourhood cars.

If you are from a stopped position you can only go 2-5kms per hour speed and it takes you about 3 or 4 minutes to get up to a cruising speed of 40 kms/hr. Really loud fluttering all the way. If you disconnect the battery for a while, it starts like a normal car and about 20km into the trip it starts gradually until it is back to where it was, which is how I got it to the friends place from my place. The smell of gas is pronounced as if the excess fuel is not being burnt off if there is an afterburner type thing on this car. I am old, and I know they don't do that anymore, but my car isn't exactly new, but until this week it was in great shape.

Thanks

 

I thought this post was about my mother in law...

badabing! I'm here all week folks!

 

That error code is not extreme. If that check engine light is lit up still (despite disconnecting the battery)...then chances are high that A/F sensor is gone and needs replacing. A dead sensor will go into what I like to call a default mode and its effects will be felt in the drivability of the vehicle (I have been down this path in Mexico, but this was due to poor fuel causing temporary A/F sensor issues). However, with the quality fuel we have in the rest of North America, it can't be fuel here. I would get that sensor replaced.

 

The error codes are there for a reason and in this case are telling you what is wrong. When you disconnect the battery for 20 minutes, the onboard computer resets. It runs on a default setting and starts collecting info from all the sensors. That is why it works fine for 20km after the battery disconnect. It is running on default and ignoring the sensors until it "learns" them and the feedback it is getting. Because the sensor is bad, it throws an error and attempts to run the rest of the motor in "compensation mode" to make up for not knowing what that sensor is doing.

Replace the sensor and if the issue persists, then continue to diagonse and worry. It will likely be gone and fixed. Be sure to reset the computer once the sensor is replaced.

 

In the end it was something called coils. apparently I only have one working one and I need three. We are fixing that and then see if the fluttering disappears, but it should stop the hovering and gas smell.