The other night I was driving my car and all a sudden it quit. I looked under the hood and my starter cable was on fire. I had it too close to the exhaust manifold. But, when I looked at the manifold, it was GLOWING red. I have heard that on V6 engines, vaccum leaks can cause this. What can cause it on the 4 cyl. I took the cat out after it happened. It might have been a plugged cat, dont know, I havent got to test it out yet. What else can cause that on the duke. Oh yeah, I just got done with a rebuild and I didnt have it times to perfection yet. I timed it the other night and it was about 8 degrees off. Could that have done it?? Let me know what you guys think.

I forgot to mention that someone I talked to said that maybe its normal for these manifolds to glow since they arent cast iron. Is that true??

If they are glowing a bright Red, that is not normal. Some might glow a bit and it sounds like you had a timing problem, if your timing was off by 8 degrees. If you feel a big loss of power while driving, you could have a blocked catalytic converter. Is your manifold still glowing after you reset the timing?

I havent been able to take the car out and warm it all the way up since I changed the timing and took out the cat. I was re-routing the starter cable and when I went to tighted the cable on the solenoid, I cracked the freaking thing. So now I have to fix the starter. I will keep ya posted though. I kinda thought too that it was just a timing issue. I hope thats what it turns out to be.

I had the same problem. It was a bad EGR valve.

had the same issue on my 85 5 spd 4 banger.. took the ecm from a buick 2.5 with auto tranny.. not a match but that car ran for another 100,000 miles before I sold it...
(this was after changing MANY other sensors so it was my last guess..
at a pick and pull junkyard the computer was 20 $ (cheaper than many sensors)