Alright any help is greatly appreciated, I decided to come to the experts on this one

My Fiero is a 1987 V6

My first problem was when I was driving to school, I was driving down the road normally when my exhaust note changed from awesome sounding (has no cat) to a really low terrible exhaust note...almost like it was plugged. When it was making this sound it had almost no power, I had my foot almost to the floor and barely keeping 55mph. I drove it like that for a minute or so and then the exhaust note went back to normal, had power and was fixed.

It did this again yesterday but I had to come to a stop this time while it had no power, still making that strange low exhaust noise, because I had to stop it didn't have enough power to take off. It stalled and every time I started it I couldn't keep it running. Towed it home and an hour later it started right up and drove normally.

Hard to say for sure, but it sounds to me like the baffles in your muffler may be falling apart and restricting the flow. How old is the muffler?

It is stock so pretty old, I just don't know why the car sitting for a while would fix itself (devil possession?), my dad seems to think it might be the pickup coil but I don't know the symptoms of a bad pickup coil. The exhaust manifold glows red at night, I heard this was common to be a little red, but this is cherry red the more I think about it I swear its my exhaust. I can take off the pipe that goes where my cat was and see if that makes a difference.

Its hard to trouble shoot something that keeps fixing itself and then breaking when you least expect it.

What does the tach do when this happens? I had a customer's car that would accelerate fine as long as you were gentle on the throttle, but as soon as you tried to accelerate quickly the the RPM's would drop suddenly from 4000 to about 2500 and stay pegged there until you released the throttle. It also made a sound like the one you're talking about because the engine just fell flat on it's face with no power. Occasionally it wouldn't start either. It was the coil in his case that was bad.

This happened to me in my old 86SE, and it was because my timing chain was loose and jumping back and forth. Check your base timing (short the diagnostic terminals.) Set your base timing to 10 degrees.

When my timing chain slipped, the timing went to about 2 degrees retarded. I advanced it to 10 degrees again, and after that I had some of my power back, but it was much less due to the valve timing being still retarded. It may have had 80hp after this happened.

Fuel Pump?

The tach will slowly climb if I am on the throttle all the way, if im not on the throttle enough the car just dies and the tach follows the rpms to 0.

But its hard to test all this because sometimes it does this and sometimes it doesnt. It cant be the timing chain because the last time it did this I just let it sit and it magicly fixed itself. It also cant be because of heat issues because the first time it did this I just kept driving and it fixed itself, I guess I'll try the changing the coil.

Nevermind, my suggestion was a bad cat. converter but I just realized you don't have one.

[This message has been edited by gh0st (edited 02-06-2012).]

My dad and brother seem to think it might be the pickup coil.

So last night my brother bought me a pick up coil, so I pulled my distributor cap off to get to the old one, everything is really rusty and stuck. Does anyone know how to get to the pickup coil, without breaking anything (my brother already broke the rotor trying to get that off)? Ive got it all soaking in penetrating oil.

For getting the distributor off the car:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HL_Zd1O9wQ
For getting the coil out:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...ZwcM&feature=related

[This message has been edited by Gall757 (edited 02-07-2012).]

Thanks everyone, I got the coil in (the old one was all corroded and green) and then my brother re-timed my car for me. I wont know if its fixed until it breaks again but hopefully that was the problem. Another thing that might be a problem is the ignition module, the sheath for the plug is broken and it looks pretty crappy.

Once again thanks for the help everybody

If your fuel filter is old replace that too. Could be building up particles in it and then blowing them out and runing good for a while again. I had a 4 cyl car do this, ended up I had rust in the tank.