I have a 2 door '92 automatic transmission tercel. Couple of days ago, while i was driving, my car suddenly started shaking. I pulled over my car and opened my hood and noticed the engine componet shaking too much then it use to. After that my car lost it's accelaration.

When i push my gas pedal, it directly touches the floor and it takes forever to hit 40mph and i have been noticing a weird sound(like grr....) when i press my gas pedal.

Recently i noticed that some smoke(white) comes from my hood. My radiator is always full with coolent. still am surprised what is making the smoke come from the hood. i have a engine leak too. It drips off the oil.
any help will be appreciated..
thnks...

I have a sputtering problem every once in a while. I found it was a spark plug (the tippy-top comes unscrewed).

If that's not the problem, buy/borrow a compression gage from the parts store. It screws into your spark plug hole. Check each cylinder's compression and write it down. They should only be about 5 psi off from each other. If you have one that is way off...you have either a blown head gasket (you should notice the coolant gage running hot) or a blown pistion/ring (usually you'd see smoke out the tailpipe).

I am leaning more towards the head gasket because you are seeing smoke under the hood. You may be leaking oil onto your exaust manifold causing the smoke you are seeing. If that's the case, easy fix...pull your head, replace the gasket. Be sure to label/take pics of every hose/tube so you can put it where it came from. Also, while it's apart, replace the timing belt.

Rob

A girlfriednd of mine had the same symptoms last week. Come to fine it was a front brake caliper locked up not letting her go over 40 mph and the smoke from under her hood was brake fluid that got so hot, it poped the lid off the master cylinder resivore and brake fluid was burning off on the engine. Beleive it or not! Really, it happened.