E36 BMW 320 missing and cutting out

[gingerpaul]

Hi all. I've got a problem with the engine on my 320 and was wondering if any of you clever people could help me solve it. I've cross-posted in the BMW and engines as I'm not sure which is more relevant.

A little while ago my engine starting missing intermittently when accelerating from a standstill after the engine had been running for over 20 minutes or so. It sounds a bit like a traction system cutting in and kills a lot of the power from the engine and noticably slows the car's acceleration. There is no traction control on the car by the way (it's a 1992/1993 car).

A couple of times now it has decided to cut out completely. When this has happened it has always been about 20 minutes o so from starting the engine. Giving it a minute to settle down and starting the engine again and it goes back to normal (although still missing sometimes when accelerating). It has happened on the motorway once and I actually managed to start it using momentum rather than the starter motor. It sounded unhappy for a few seconds but did start again. After that it was fine the whole way home (aboutan hour or so).

It's had new plugs and oil, filters etc recently and I've changed the fuel filter and cleaned the air flow meter in an attempt to cure this problem but I'm assuming there are some electronics somewhere playing silly buggers. Would anyone suggest a good place to start diagnosing the fault? Is it worth going to a garage with a diagnostic computer to check the ECU for fault codes? Will anything useful show up?

Thanks in advance. Hopefully it's a known fault or there's a sensor that causes this kind of problem. Apart from this the car's done well so I'd like to keep it going.