Thread: having troubles with load on engine

hopefully someone out there is having this trouble...
i've got a '02 3.8L with 270k miles on it and haven't had any troubles up till now, literally as in i bought my first set of plugs last week i'm hoping to hit half a million miles before I retire her... currently it's having troubles and I'm running out of guesses... up hill or any time you push down more than half-way on the gas, the engine cuts out as if it's missing if you try and floor it going up hill it's almost as if the transmission dis-engages and the motor sputters, oh and the SES light flashes!... so far i've tried blaming the plugs (all are firing proper and no more "service engine soon" light, the EGR valve (poured in some sea foam stuff into the vacuum line and it cleared the stuck SES light) and the transmission (i only hope it's not the trans)... new blames are: this weekend I'm going to pull the EGR valve (that appears might be leaking?) and see what i can figure out on it... also might try and get it into a shop to have them check the fuel pressure coming out of the fuel pump...
PLEASE PLEASE if anyone has any suggestions, i'm so proud of this car rolling over 200,000 miles I hate to see it biting the dust before it hits 300,000 miles!

actually only replaced the spark plugs on the front (the easy to get to) none of the plugs showed any wear nor did the wires appear to have mis-firings.
cut one of the wires while trying to get it off the plug hence the problem with the first cyl. firing, so I bought wires but just replaced that one... The flashing SES light only appears when climbing a steep hill with the pedal floored and clears shortly after. Can it still be in the firing?

yes, still on the original trans and yes sounds exactly like my problem other than haven't really noticed a loud noise from the trans, although there seems to be some noise when going in and out of gear and other hard shifting... I'm going to check the EGR, Fuel Filter, fuel pump and change the remaining plugs and wires this weekend... I'll probably head to the shop if it's still having issue's... Had codes pulled on it last week at Autozone (won't buy their parts but nice to get codes pulled for free) came up and said that I had a mis-firing in cyl 1 (no surprise since that's the one i had the inferior cable on and i've already replaced) and that the EGR was having issue's, used sea foam (anybody interested in this trick pull the vac line off the brake and pour sea foam in the vac line while rev'ing the engine let sit a while, it'll run like crap for a hour or so but it clears the EGR and clean any carbon build up that might be on sensors)

yea flashing SES means catalyst damaging misfire...clogged cat, to test disconnect downpipe and do a quock run...problem solved? then order up a ZZP downpipe

thanks, I did replace the remaining spark plugs and wires with no change also took it in to have codes read on it (don't have a code reader myself...yet) came up with several codes but the mechanic didn't really agree with all of them (wished I had my own code reader now) he found a blown gasket on the intake manifold... at 370$ i'll be fixing it myself, got a friend picking the car up and taking it to the muffler shop to check it out right now... appreciate the input please keep it coming, not crazy about the mechanics comment "well the blown gasket on the intake manifold is definitely a problem, not sure it's THE problem"...

No sense in guessing here... You need to have the car scanned and find out what the code is, there is history on it as to what it is. Once you get it, look it up and that will tell you what to fix.

If you want to keep it for half a mill miles, you better buy the service manuals!

appreciate the input mechanic said he needed the intake gasket fixed before he could really figure out what was going on with the engine (multiple codes, and I wasn't face to face to find out what the codes were)... the cat is a quick test and costs a mere 20$ aside from this forum at least 6 people have told me they had similar issue's with the cat. (also when my buddy took it into the muffler shop yesterday they told him, after he described the problem, that the cat. was very likely the culprit)...

Just got word back from my bud who took the car to the muffler shop the cat converter was definitely the problem he said it's back to running like a champ! Once I get my intake gasket fixed I'll be back on the road...

Awesome!

If you ever need to look up a code, ask!