I went for a drive today and at first everything was working good. The suddendenly it started sputtering when I pushed the trottle quickly. If I pushed it slowly I could bring it up to red line and it didn't seem to sputter at all but if i floored it quickly it sputtered.This happened under load and in neutral. When I first left this morning I pushed the trottle quickly but it didn't do it. I turned around and came back home. Once I got back home everything seems to work ok. And the CEL never came on. Any idea what could have caused this.
I am a little unsure as to what 'sputtered' means; however, here goes! Assuming that we are talking about the 2000 NSX you included in your profile and that it retains its OBDII ECU and assuming that what you described is not a misfire (which if it is bad should generate specific misfire codes). It is possible that you could have a problem with your throttle position switch. However, I will admit that I think this is pretty rare because the TPS is a pretty dumb-ass simple reliable device.
The ECU uses the throttle position switch to tell it that the throttle is being opened and that it needs to apply some temporary fuel enrichment to help the engine during the transient period while the throttle is being opened. Absence of this enrichment could manifest itself as hesitation in performance during the throttle opening process. Once the throttle stops moving and the engine arrives at its new operating speed, you should not notice any performance issues as the throttle position does squat (except to shut off the O2 feedback loop at real high throttle openings) once the you stop moving the throttle. This jives with the fact that you said that the engine will operate fine at red line (no sputtering).
On an OBDII car, an iffy TPS would normally generate a 0122 or 0123 code. I don't now what parameters Honda uses to set the code and whether it has to repeat 2 or 3 times before generating a MIL light. With a code reader, you might be able to find whether you trapped some codes but didn't reach the threshold to set the MIL light. It may also be possible that the problem with the TPS isn't bad enough to trigger the threshold.
A lot of cars will operate moderately satisfactorily with the TPS disconnected. I don't know whether the NSX is one of them. Acceleration will be kind of crappy with the TPS disconnected. I did this for a whole day on a pre OBDII car (not my NSX) after forgetting to connect the TPS after doing a throttle body cleaning.
Check the wiring around your TPS to make sure that it is not frayed. If the problem comes back, and you can't find any other source for the problem,
as a last resort, try disconnecting the TPS and driving the car. If it drives the same with the TPS disconnected, then you likely have a problem with the TPS.
