After I filled up and spent the next 10 minutes answering questions, I started her up and she was making a loud "POP-POP-POP-POP-POP-POP-POP."
I guessed it must be a popped exhaust manifold gasket (that's not a figure of speech, I don't even know if the T uses an exhaust manifold gasket. It really was a guess.
)It seemed to run fine in low gear, but in high gear it was very sluggish.
When I got home I accidentally killed the engine backing up the driveway when I reduced the throttle to the lowest position, which seemed odd because I recently adjusted that control so that it wouldn't die when I lowered the throttle.
I got it started again and decided to open the hood to see if I could pinpoint the exhaust leak. And there, mocking me, was the number four spark plug laying on top of the head right next to the number four spark plug hole just sparking away.
So I shut it down, grabbed a 13/16th wrench and put the plug back in. Since I already had the wrench out I checked the others too. They were tight. Started it up again and everything is back to normal.
The part that surprised me (other than opening the hood and seeing the spark plug sparking next to its hole) was that in low gear it wasn't even noticeable that only three cylinders were firing, other than the noise.
I love this car.
