Pontiac Repair: Grand Prix Lack of Power, grand prix gt, first brick

Question
Hi Todd, 2001 Grand Prix GT with a 3800 engine and 113,000mi. This is the wife’s car and I don’t drive it much but when I went to get her gas this morning it didn’t have much power. When first started it idled a little rough for a few seconds and then it was OK. When I started down the road it didn’t have much pick-up. I seem to have to give it a lot of gas to get it up to 40mph. When I floored it, it fell on its face and started pinging. I let off enough to stop the pinging and it slowly started to pick up speed until I got up to 40mph. When I came to a grade in the road and gave it a little gas there was not any power and it would kick down a gear. I had only gone about 5mi.so I turned around and went back. I asked my wife to drive it to see if it was doing that on Friday and she said no, she would have noticed it. Last weekend we were out and I did notice it seem to take longer to get up to speed, but not as bad as today, and it was the first time I had used the air conditioning and though that was why.

We had gotten a letter from Pontiac in Sept. 2005 that said “there were complaints of lack of power and this may be due to the front endcone insulation from the catalytic converter breaking away and blocking the front of the first brick and preventing the free flow of exhaust through the converter” It said this was not a recall but if you think your car has this condition take it to the dealer and they will fix it at no charge if it is within 10 years or 120,000. Do you think this could be my problem? If not, any ideas? Thanks, Robert.

Answer
Hey Robert:

Well it's either the converter is oartailly plugged not allowing the engine to breathe or it's a fuel delivery problem from a pluggd fuel filter or a fule pump that can't produce enough pressure or volume of fuel that the engine needs to run.  It's one or the other.  Take it to the dealrr and have them look at it. If it's a converter it's a covered repair via that special policy you got in the mail. If not then you will have to pay to have them fix any other problem it has. Good luck :)