My 245 has always bucked when it has less than about 35 litres in it's 60 litre tank, ever since the first time I drove it. Since the fuel gauge doesn't work, I used that as a handy warning that it could use some more juice.

Over the last few months things have gotten quite a bit worse. It likes to lean out dramatically, so that I can only use the lightest touch on the throttle, any more and it just splutters out. I've been reduced to 40km/h on the freeway, driven 150 km bucking all the way, that kind of thing.

There are two symptoms that the brick likes to spring on me. One is where it bucks along like someone is repeatedly ramming me with a bus (I looked in the mirror and they aren't). This I attribute to a dodgey in-tank feed, but there is one other problem

During long highway drives, it sometimes just decides not to give me any fuel, well not very much anyway, leaving me puttering (smoothly, no bucking) along very slowly. Sometimes with light throttle it can be coaxed up to 70km/h like this, but no more. This is accompanied by intermittent screaching sounds from the main pump.

Because this only seems to happen on the freeway, it's hard to figure out what causes it when the car is parked outside my house. Where should I begin? I'm sure the Bentley manual would tell me exactly what I need to know, but I can't get my hands on one here in oz. The Haynes does little more than point out where the obvious components of the system are, and has little on how to diagnose which one is at fault. The only thing I know is that it's not relay related, because the problem continued driving with the relay jumpered.

I want to take a road trip on the weekend, and I need to trust my car. Is this going to be as simple as just replacing the bad hose?
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Drive it like you hate it