My fiance describes the problem on her 1977 244DL:

When it's cold, my little car is hard to start. It sputters and has to be forced to keep going by keeping the accelorator compressed for a minute or two. There's lots of clicking, like the sound of valves flapping, while it warms up. While moving, it balks during acceleration, sometimes not picking up speed even with the pedal to the floor. Going up hills, it has to be kept at an elevated speed because the slightest deceleration causes the car to hesitate badly, sometimes nearly coming to a stop and stalling altogether. When starting from a stop on a hill, it often stalls. A full tank of gas helps with the acceleration, but as soon as the tank gets to about the half-full point, it runs worse. Warm weather helps all of these syptoms but the hill-related ones. (warm weather is above 60 degrees.)

Our mechanic is thinking to replace the injectors. Rae, my fiance, intuition is the fuel pumps. Any Ideas?

Scott