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I have a 04 ford taurus. Randomly at time and only when I get on the access ramp for the hhighway, it will hit the gas pedal and no power at all but it will eventually pick up n be normal.
Brought it to my mechanic and he changed the spark plugs and wires and it worked fine. Now, its back again and even worse. Car won't go above 70 or into third gear, it seems to me. Also, it was idling weird after I stopped at the office too.
Will I be able to drive it home in the morning as well as any ideas of what it could be going wrong? My dad suggested, it may be my catalyic converter failing.
You Dad could be correct. Get him to step on the pedal while you listen to the exhaust pipe. If you hear hissing he is correct. You may want to take a wild guess at the pressure exiting that tail pipe too. If should be freely flowing out waste gasses. My take is you can beg and plead and the car will get a little faster in a little while.
When the engine is at full warm as it should idle more or less ok, pop the hood and with your Dad stepping on the gas pedal again look at the head pipe coming off the exhaust manifold. be prepared to Yell shut it off Dad! the pipe is turning bright orange! What ever you do do not touch any bright orange parts...... Do this in eveing when it is darker to see best!
At the shop now. He said the ignition coil failed. The hissing sound that I heard earlier? I have some small holes in my intake so he said he will need to change that as well. Soon as he put some tape over the holes, the car stopped struggling. Waiting to see what else he founds wrong with it...
There are plenty of things it could be, as the others said, but I am not satisfied you had the engine running wamed up well and had a help hold engine speed up long enough for the head pipe to get orange hot, not even dull red hot in dim light.
If the cat IS clogged you can spend a lot of time tracking other things down for nothing.
With the thrttle body open, exposed you may gauge if the air going in is about the same as the waste gasses going out. Of course if the cat is clogged the incoming air will be restricted as well. It is critical that the cat is not clogged.
Once that is a known good anything else is a go to get checked out.
Holes in the intake? Before or after the throttle body? If after, that will get you all sorts of troubles too.
It can also be clogged as a result of that bad coil.
Any check engine light? If so, what codes?
Kinda sounds like your guy is doing a lot of guessing.
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