yup, i got to school this morning and my car was idling super low 500 ish and rough, and i used 1/4 tank for 25 miles, figured about 6 and some change mpg. Once i get off of school it ran okish till it got on the highway, then it statred "cutting out" you could feel the power come on and off almost surging, but not as bad. i tried down shifting to go over an over pass and nothing, i had the car floored it made no difference, car wouldn't let me go past 3k or so. and it got soo bad i couldnt break 50 mph. i actually had to cut to thru a field to hurry home vice taking the long way. I'm gonna be taking the cats off tomorrow fitting in a test pipe and see if that works. When i came up to a stop i smelled a rich exhaust coming from it, richer than normal. There is no black soot or the like anywhere so idk. so in total gas usage today round trip to and from school 50 miles was half a friggin tank. yes, you read that right, half a tank. so what could be wrong with it?

 

Sounds like an injector failure.

 

are you sure the cat hasn't failed?

 

If you lost your leading ignition, that would produce a highly retarded ignition, which would overheat the exhaust system. Your car would also run like crap, have a terrible idle, and no power to speak of.


.

 

how does one fix this?

 

Ah yes, that would do it as well.

You can test the leading ignition coil by following the procedures in the FSM. Or you can swap a known good unit.

Edit...Hell, it's probably easiest to just pull a leading plug wire when the car is running and check for spark.

 

injectors?

 

was your car over heating also?

 

that's the thing my car WASN'T overheating, if anything it was running, at least temp-wise, really good. i was gonna drop that section of pipe and try it with a muffler to see if it's the cats. ima check the spark as well.

 

Easier to check for spark than it is to pull your cat. Also a much likelier suspect in my opinion...

 

turns out it was the cat that was completly shot, so i pulled it and threw a test pipe up and voila! car runs like a champ now!