91 ford escort gt

Joined: Dec 01, 2005 Posts: 1

Well, i'm not much of a mechanic, but i want to get a general idea of what sort of problems i'm facing here.

My car is a standard, and at first, i lost power to it , it had no guts anymore. it would rev to about 4k rpm, hold steady as the speed increased (slowly) and then finally drop down for the next gear shift. then today, my gf said the car smelled really bad (which it did). i then went to the gas station to get some gas and as i was pulling out, it barely made it out, it was losing all power. so i tried to make it home (almost made it) and it finally lost all power. at one point, i couldn't even shift gears (so i pulled off the road and shut it off, then back on and i could shift again) but once it was off the road it was toast. i had to get it towed home.

any ideas? any and all help would be appreciated.

External Since: May 14, 2005 Posts: 36

What kind of smell is coming from the car? Burning, smoke or more specific
like an antifreeze leak or possibly rotten eggs which could indicate a
clogged catalytic converter. The two things that came to my mind, because
you said it was losing all of its power and smells bad, are a clogged
catalytic converter, which if fully or partially clogged will stink and
cause the car to lose power. The other was a blown head gasket (or a
coolant leak at any spot in the cooling system for that matter), which would
cause antifreeze to leak out all over the ground and the warm engine, which
would cause a very noticeable burning smell. Plus it may have caused a lot
of damage, depending on how long you drove it while it was leaking.

Note that these are only possible scenarios. You'll have to pop open the
hood and see if you can spot any obvious leaks. If there are none, post
back here and tell us what kind of smell your girlfriend was smelling.
There are so many possibilities of smells that you have to be more specific.
I only touched on two of them, but you could be smelling gasoline, which
would be much more serious.

Sharky