Originally Posted by TucsonKiwi

Well, problem solved, and man is this dumb... feel free to laugh at the Ph.D. who knows **** about cars...

It turns out that what had happened was that the rubber and metal sleeve that slips over the accelerator pedal had slipped most of the way off and was sticking up and interfering with plastic and that in the firerwall, only when I floored it. So when I floored it the pedal stuck down sometimes, and released when I pumped it.

I was thinking it must have been somthing sticking in the pedal mechanism after I relaized that the pedal itself was actually sticking down when this was happening, but I thought I might have bent something, never imagined it would be something this dumb!

Unreal, I didn't see it 'cause it's sort of hard to see down there unless you get down and look.

Anyway, all good now, and as a result of my looking into the problem I have leared how to do a throttle reset, which is cool and makes a noticable difference, and also have bought one of those new toggleable sprint boosters, can't wait to see how that goes.

By the way, is it really that unusual to have gone through a set of factory front brake pads at 38000 miles?