Pontiac Repair: pontiac montana chugging

Question
my 2001 pontaic montana is having trouble wanting to start when i put in reverse it sometimes stalls but in drive when reaching speeds in the am first starting its chugging and engine light starts to blink but then goes away after the vehicle starts going. any ideas what it could be? thanks

Answer
Hi Pamela:
there is an engine misfire. The fact that the light blinking means the misfire is severe enough to cause catalytic converter damage. if it only does it on a heavy acceleration chances are it's a had spark plug wire. if it misfires all the time then it could be something worse like an ignition coil or a ignition control module. with out seeing it I can't tell you for sure but it sure sounds like that is the issue. If it does it worse when it's raining out or on a damp AM start up then for sure you have bad spark plug wires.
Good luck :-)