sitting for 5 minutes it turns cherry red and it backfires alot lol sound slike a stupid question but ive never delt with this problem before so thats what im guessing. any help is awesome, as always thanks

[This message has been edited by Niterrorz (edited 05-22-2012).]

Remove the O2 sensor and see if it runs better. Only do this for a short time as hot exhaust gases will be pumping into the engine compartment.

Do it right and use a vac gauge to check.
Start it up and look at the gauge, should be 15-20 in vac, rev it to 2000 RPM, hold it at 2k, and watch the gauge it should go back to what it was at idle.
If it doesn't or goes less vac then the cat is plugged.

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[This message has been edited by sardonyx247 (edited 05-23-2012).]

red cat and backfiring sound more like symptoms than the problem itself

UNless you are gettin unburnt fuel burning in your exhaust, possibly from bad engine timing? I would think cat is all it could be.

thanks all, its on an 86 gt and its my friends so ill let him know and will get back with whats going on.

So what happened. I've got the same symptoms on an '87 GT so I an curious.

When the cat plugged up on my '86T, the car had absolutely no guts over 3000 RPM. The engine couldn't breathe.

I had a Lincoln TC that got a clogged cat. It seemed to run ok, but it wasnt a muscle car. I found out it was bad when I parked on the grass and it started a fire. It was red hot.

the plugs were on wrong and it was dumping fuel into the cat. the distributor was put on wrong by previous owner (this is my friends car.... that i sold him... so it was previous owner to me as it just sat after i bought it....) anyway. the wires were on wrong and we had to redo everything.

Could disconnect it and see what changes.

ya take your cap off rotate it to TDC and see where it sits in relation to where your #1 cyl was plugged in at. thats what i did.

Hey man just from it happening to me about 5 or 6 times (on different cars) including my 85 duke, after raw fuel has been dumped into cat repetedly it will infact damage your cat. it prettty much eats it up on the inside and it stops doing its job very quickly. the check engine light p0420 will pop up on OBD2 cars idk about or fieros.

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