Hello fellow car enthusiast..i have a problem..i have a 2001 escape,3.0l...i bought the car in february...the day after i bought it i was driving on the expressway and all of a sudden i lost pressure and acceleration...then i started hearin a hissing noise from under the hood...i pop the hood and theres a hole in the egr valve...i work on cars so i replaced it...and i drove fine all the way up until august...i all of a sudden had a misfire on number 6 cylinder...no power what so ever...it ran better when the egr valve had a hole in it....i jus replaced the plug 2 sundays ago...the car ran fine for a day...and the misfire sode came back up on number 6...so i knew then it was the coil...b4 i even get to change the coil,wut happened in february happened all over again...so now im stumped..instead of jus replacing the egr valve i also need to find out what is causing it to get holes in it...sorry for the long story, i just wanted to give you the full maintanence factors on the car...thanks for your help.:banghead:

Welcome to AF!

The Escape's with the V6 have been known to have plugged cats. The extra pressure is causing the EGR valve to fail. About the only remedy is to put in a new cat.

ok..i kinda figured that...but y didnt the cat code come up on diagnostics????how many cats are there...and if more than one,which one will the most likely to b the problem...thanks

There's just the one catalytic converter. Sometimes they won't trigger a diagnostic code. One way to check before you get into it is to put a vacuum gauge on the intake. If the vacuum gauge reads 17 inches or less, the cat is probably plugged up or the muffler is plugged up. Most likely it would be the cat. Good luck!

The ECU/ PCU uses two O2 sensors, the upstream is used for Air/Fuel mix, and the down stream is used to check the catalyst in the converters.
If the catalytic coverter doesn't perform, the ECU gets a signal from the down stream O2 sensor, and a code is thrown.
If a catalytic converter is plugged, it usually doesn't throw a code, but causes
heat damage.

I have seen ,a plugged Catalytic coverter choke a 4-cylinder out.

Any local muffler shop should beable to run a back- pressure test on your catalytic converter.

My 03 Escape looks like it has a front and rear converter, my guess is that the front is the converter. So what is in the rear is it a resinator then the muffler?? Thanks for amy reply.

Yeah, you only have the one cat. The other is probably a resonator.