Ford Repair: 95 T-Bird acc. slow good, acc. fast not good, snap on mt2500, fuel pressure gauge

Question
Sorry, probably answered this one hundreds of times. We were recently GIVEN a 1995 Thunderbird by my husbands co-worker. We are planning on giving it to our daughter for her 16th B-day in May. It looks great and everything works, except this one problem. Starts fine, idles fine, accelerate slowly fine there too. But, accelerate fast (punch it) and it acts like it is starving for gas. Guess you call this stalling or hesitating? Hubby borrowed a snap-on mt2500 scanner but guess what, not sure how it works either. So, can you tell us in what direction to go first? He is pretty mechanically inclined, with the older (no computer) autos, but these are alittle more difficult to troubleshoot.

Answer
Shelli-

  I'd say your best bet is that the fuel pressure regulator is either shot or not connected properly.  If the car isn't showing a check engine light the scanner probably won't do you much good anyway.  My advice would be to hook a fuel pressure gauge up to the fuel line after the regulator.  Watch where it is when the car is started and the throttle is applied gently, and then see what happens when you hit the gas hard.  You should be looking at something in the neighborhood of low-mid 30s as far as psi of fuel pressure goes.  If the regulator checks out ok, it's something a bit more complicated like clogged injectors, a bad mass air meter, etc.  Hope this helps.

Steve