Ok, I brought my car to a fully licenced mechanic, doing work out of his house. I've been having tons of trouble with my 89 2.8 Bird because it doesn't want to run over 2100 RPM. Anyways, I took it to a GM dealer, got it troubleshot, and it was the fuel pump running at 18 PSi. Buddy here says it MIGHT be the fuel pump, but my brand new, 1 week old universal catalytic converter is plugged, because I somehow put it on backwards. Is this possible?

 

you need a fuel psi guage to see what it really is should be 40-43psi.
pull the cat back off and see if it runs differently.
bring it to a muffler shop they usually will test your cat for free.

 

It was full of soot. He changed it with a made to fit one, which ran me about.. 370$ with labour.

 

He needs to honor the part with a warranty I would guess.

 

Unless you were running REALLY rich, I doubt your cat would be shot.

Even here in Canada, I bought a cat for $160 (Walker) and put it on in 20 minutes.

You, my friend, paid a lot of money for a little task.


And on a universal fit, it could have been backwards, and yeah, you could have messed it up, but I doubt it'd be shot that quickly?

 

Im a automotive tech by trade and yea a clogged cat could cause no power. low Fuel PSI should keep the car from running at all

 

Though, the only clogged cat I've ever seen in my life was on a sixty something Chevy pickup a couple years back with the stock cat. We drove 'er up to a hill at 110 kmph and dropped the 30 on the way up. Brought 'er back to the shop where we took off the cat and ran straight headers, we picked up 35kmph going up the hill!

Yeah, it robs power, but I can't believe a week old cat can clog that fast.

 

at our shop there was a caravan that had never gotten is well needed tune up... the car ran rich. clogged the cat so bad the evap canister melted.... cats are pretty picky if you think about it. any little bit of rich running makes them run hotter by a margin

 

So it wasn't a rip. It seems that my fuel line hose leading to the tank was twisted around 3 times, and that it was running lean. He said the Y-pipe and cat were red hot, and the cat is acually kind of has a tinge of blue to it. But metal chips are falling out of it aswell. Thanks guys.

 

that would definately do it. If the cat got red hot its usually toasted anyways good luck