I have a 95 Avenger SE with 109000 miles that I recently (last fall) bought knowing it had several issues. It runs, but the timing belt is installed incorrectly causing it to run poorly. It also has a leaky head gasket that is causing oil to end up circulating in the radiator fluid. After letting it sit for the winter, I went to start it up and it would do nothing more than idle roughly and die. Giving it any gas would cause it to die immediately. I replaced the battery which helped in the ease of starting, but the idle was still horrible. I treated it with seafoam which seemed to help and was eventually able to get it to rev up and run as normal as it can with the bad belt placement. The strange thing is that once I am able to get the engine to rev, the idle becomes normal. I can shut the car off and start it again, but it starts with the same idle issues and I have to work at getting it to run by pumping the gas along with the oscillating idle. Again, as soon as it revs up just once it returns to normal idle. What would cause this strange behavior? (If you can tell what I mean through words alone). Is this simply the timing belt, or could there be something related to the injectors and or some other electrical issue at fault? I've thought about the gas being bad, but once the car revs up it runs just fine so i dont that that is the case. the previous owners were the ones to attempt to change the timing belt and I am assuming that they changed the wires and plugs as well because the wires look new.

Sorry for the novel here, but the last problem I am having is that there is absolutely no throttle response in first gear and it accelerates very slowly. As soon as it shifts to second the car drives relatively normally and responds to throttle. I am sure this is in part due to the timing belt, but could there be something else to blame here as well?

Thanks for all and any help!:4-dontknow:

Since you know the timing belt is installed wrong and the head gasket needs replaced, you should get these issues taken car of first then go from there.