I've been searching around trying to get ideas of what could be the issue, but the possibilities are pretty broad from what I've gathered so far.

Basically, the car starts fine, sounds fine when it's idling, but when I put it into gear the idles drop to about 250 and sounds almost Subie like. The car's an automatic, by the way. When I press on the gas lightly it accelerates very slowly but when I get on it the engine bogs and the tach barely raises by a couple hundred rpms. A couple days ago I could get 'er up to 45, it would just take longer than normal cuz of the hesitation in acceleration. But now, I can barely get up to 25 and if I'm going up any kind of incline I'm stuck at about 15-20 mph and the car sounds horrible. If I try and accelerate up the incline the car refuses and the exhaust/intake note just gets loud and the car doesn't pick up speed, just stutters between first and second gears.

I've checked my trans fluid and engine oil levels/color and everything seems fine there. I thought it might be something w/ the exhaust at first, cuz my car is low as hell and I figured it was possible to dent the piping enough to cause a flow problem - but I don't see anything like that and doubt that cause this annoying a problem. At this point I'm thinking either I've got a fouled spark plug or something's off with the dizzy; but I'm worried it might be something w/ the trans itself.

Any thoughts would be helpful...

 

do you have an CEL's it sounds like your ECU is in limp mode

 

Well the light's never come on but I haven't had a chance to hobble on over to Autozone to have 'em run a check on the ECU...

 

That would be a starting point. Is anything on the car hardwired engine wise? Have you done a tune up recently?

 

I haven't modded my car much at all, aside from rims, stereo and suspension. And it's due for a tune up but I haven't done it yet...

I might do a code check myself to see if anything pops up...

 

Clogged cat maybe?

 

car died today on the way to the parts store. went and replaced the plugs, which were definitely fouled and in need of replacing. now the car starts but won't stay running, it idles real low for about 10 seconds or so and then dies. i'm thinkin fuel filter, fuel pump, something along those lines? clearly it's got spark cuz it starts but won't really run

 

Im gonna have to agree with 2k_si. Checking the cat is pretty easy, depending what motor you have, as long as you have a jack and maybe a jack stand or 2. If you cat is part of the exhaust manifold, then you will need to take the manifold off. Shine a light through it and see if you can see the light on the other side, or if it is falling apart. No light, falling apart= bad. If it is not connected to the manifold, but connected at the end of the header/manifold, un bolt it and look through it. Refer to previous statement. If eveything looks good and it is not bolted to the manifold, unbolt the cat and drive it to see if it changes. KEEP IN MIND IT IS GOING TO BE VERY LOUD. Also i do not recommend driving like this very far. Hope this helps.

 

So apparently the cat is the problem! I replaced the spark plugs, cap, rotor and coil and that helped, but the cat is definitely clogged. So now I gotta work out a test pipe or something and get that taken care of...

Thanks for the help guys