Gargoyles

These are awesome suggestions, thank you! I'll report back when I'm able to go through some of these checks.

Thank you, I appreciate the quick response and ideas. As far as I know it is an ej22, AT. I'm kind of guessing a leak somewhere too, I read somewhere that one way to check for vacuum leaks is by spraying carb cleaner on the connections.. If there is a leak the RPMs will change. Is that true?

The title is a little misleading, but I don't know a good way to describe it. I'll start with some background. 148k miles, just had a timing kit done on the car. Replaced the engine coolant temperature sensor after reading that this possibly was the cause for my rough idle and the engine cranking, but not catching when warm starting. By the way, this has totally solved my problem (fingers crossed).. this forum is awesome and thank you to all those that contribute... saved me a bunch of money on that fix.. But now, I'm just noticing (I don't know if it is because before I replaced the ECTS my engine was always running rough, or because I knocked something loose in the process, or what) when I'm accelerating, it doesn't accelerate smoothly. It seems to get through the first gear normally, then when accelerating through the next gear I can feel (and see the tachometer) the car kind of oscillate between accelerating at a predictable rate then slowing down (but still accelerating) then back up, and down again, etc. When watching the tachometer it will rise, then stop, then rise, then stop, etc. I don't know if this is making any sense, but I don't know how else to describe it. Any thoughts on what this could be, what to check, fix, replace, etc.? Also, when flushing my coolant and replacing the hoses, I noticed a small leak right next to (below) the air vent plug on the radiator. It is right where the upper hose connects to the radiator where that horizontal plane meets the vertical plane. Again I'm sorry if I'm not describing things in conventional ways... I'm not really mechanical at all, I'm just trying to be these days to save money. Anyway, do I need to replace the whole radiator because of this, or is it safe to use come kind of leak stop... if so, what recommendations for leak stop. I needed, I could provide pictures when I get home. Thanks for any and all help. I did do some searching for these things, but didn't find what I needed. I'm sorry if this stuff has been discussed already, just let me know and I can do more searching.