Engine doesn;t want to rev

Quick background - I had a nail in one of my rear tires and since money is a bit tight as I just finished college (huzzah!) and have a week before starting a job where I am on a bi-weekly pay system and a one paycheck lag (boooooo!) I just got a pair of firestones because they were on sale and seemed good enough for the car. I had the good front tires rotated to the back and the new tires put on the front. Within 5 miles of leaving the store I was having issues.

I'm aware this is probably not related to the tires themselves but it is possible one of their techs hit something as far as sensors go and I think this is an electrical problem.

Randomly, my car's cruise control won;t work. Not as in "Some days it will" or "Some startups it will" it literally seems every 5 minutes it changes its mind if it wants to work or not. On top of that, and not always at the same time as the cruise control, the car won;t rev much past 2000 rpm and the revs will stop building. If I slow down, the revving problem fixes itself (not the cruise control) so I thought it might be the transmission. But shifts are still smooth enough for an old car and if I shift into neutral and back into drive it doesn't seem to fix it.

Lacking the time today to put some miles on it, I can only say the folowing

1) Traction control OFF seems to help but I think it still happened once
2) The car idles and shifts identical to how it did before this happened which leads me to think the problem is in the engine
3) No check engine lights and traction control can be switched on/off so it doesn;t appear to be a misfire
4) When the engine won;t rev, pressing the throttle down results in a large rushing noise form the engine bay similar to the supercharger but not quite.


Update: THe vacuum lines all appear to be connected but I hear a faint whistling sound under the hood. Which lines should I check first for leaks? Bear in mind that I replaced all of my vacuum lines last year when I got the car so they shouldn't be worn out already but it is possible.
I will check to make sure all vacuum lines are connected properly in the morning but this still seems weird.

1) Confirm the problem happens with Traction Control turned off.

2) Check the tire size of the new pair. Are they 225/60 R16?

AA wrote:

2) Check the tire size of the new pair. Are they 225/60 R16?

Following up to AA's post -

Having mismatched new tires of the right size with full tread and old worn down tires of little tread at the same time can confuse the traction control system. The ABS may stop working as well.

If it proves out to be the mismatched tire sizes, you may have to disable the traction control every time you drive.

If you have no choice but to continue having mismatched tire sizes, you can remove the ABS fuse to avoid disabling the trac ctrl every time you drive the car until you can remedy the tire size mismatch issue.

Well the old owners' lack of care strikes again. The old tires were 235/65/16s while the new ones are 225/60/16s. I get why you would alter tire sizes if you cared about performance or the car but it seems odd that someone would put different sized tires on the stock rims on a car that's been pretty neglected. Most tire places I know of won't even mention that you can do that unless you specifically ask them.

But yes, I have different sized tires front and rear now I guess. Oh well, it's essentially spring time now so traction control isn't really needed anymore.

But why is it so random? That was what struck me as odd since sometimes it would be fine other times it wouldn't. And the sound it made was different than the normal TCS sounds.

It wasn't the old owner's error, because the he/she made sure to put the same size tires on all 4 wheels. Nothing wrong with that, even if the car isn't in prime shape. The fault lies between you and the shop that installed the new tires, not knowing a car with 4-wheel ABS won't work with mismatched tires.

And It's not really random - it has to do with your speed. Your overall tire diameter is about 5% smaller at the rear, so at 5 MPH, your rear wheels are telling the PCM they're moving at 5.25 MPH - within acceptable limits, so everything works fine. But when you cruise at 75 MPH, the rear wheels are reporting 79 MPH. That's a big enough difference that the PCM thinks the front wheels are slipping, so it kicks in countermeasures to slow the car down.

Unless you want to limit your speed to about 80 MPH, and possibly burn out your ABS pump, I'd pull that ABS fuse until you can get a correct set of tires on the front, or try asking your shop if they will trade you the new ones for a set of 235/65 16s.