Car sputters and rpms jump up and down when I give it throttle

[Beanokid69]

ok, so two days ago I was taking my friend home and I was very low on gas, on the way up his hill my car started to sputter hard, backfire and the rpms would drop to 0 and back to where they were supposed to be at....I figured I was running out of gas. I called my other friend and he brought me some gas and my car started up just fine, on the way down the hill it sputtered for a second or 2 then was fine again so I figured it was maybe some low on pressure in my fuel lines or something. All was fine for the next day but today it started doing it again. It will only do it for a minute or so then be fine again, So im guessing something is starting to fail. What could it be? Im guessing something spark related because when that happens I backfire and can smell the unburnt fuel. It acts just like when you blow off an intercooer pipe aside from the rpms jumping up and down. It cant be a boost leak though becuase it only does this once in a while.

 

[luvmygst]

You did add more gas right?

 

[dsm93turbo]

Your fuel filter could also be clogged from it running low on gas and the fuel pump coulda picked up some sediment from the bottom of the tank

 

[AWDstylez]

Check/replace your power transistor. Low gas doesn't cause the tach to jump around, that's an ignitor problem.

 

[Beanokid69]

wheres my power transistor..... and yes, the tach thing is kinda the biggest give away on it being something spark related.

 

[Beanokid69]

**UPDATE** The car died yesterday and it wont start.

I changed my transistor....I couldnt find a 92-94 turbo and im not 100% sure if it is turbo/non-turbo specific....but since I have a universal COP setup I happened to find a 90-91 turbo transistor and a 92-94 non turbo 2.0L transistor and I tried both of those and my car still wont start.

What else could be the problem? How can I test my COP and Transistor? I dont have a volt meter btw