Here is my situation. I lost a water pump 1 week ago on Thursday. Car was running fine and about 5mi. from home the pump started making the death noise and when i got home dumped its coolant on my driveway. The car sat for five days due to work/incliment weather and on Wed of this week took it to the shop on a flatbed. Had the water pump and timing belt relpaced. Picked up the car thursday night and have some bad performance. To describe what it feels like is the same feeling when you have a really hard rain and try to accelerate your 2 quickly and the wires are not good and you get the spark jumping, or Ive felt the same bogging in cars Ive had in the past with a bad Catalytic Converter (no CC on this one). There is also an oddity with the heater in the car, when i run for say five minutes and turn it on the air is toasty warm after 1-2 minutes its chilly. As far as Idle the car is smoother than it has ever been and slight revving just produces a nice burble. One other symptom, Being is i have no cat, I get the ineveitable pops upon shifting from the tailpipe, but these were a slight pop pop upon shifting at high rpm and not really pusing it hard into next gear or slowing down with compression, Now each time i shift i get 4-6 overlaid pops (so im thinking much more gas is blowing through). It also feels when I pull out in first that Im pulling out in third some of the time. Plug wires and plugs are otw from next gear as soon as they get back to me, what else should i be looking at? Compression test? Timing check from indipendent garage? other? (garage that did it swears they have the timing correct, not a tooth off(not that they want to take it back apart))