(yet another) problem

[rruddfan21]

starting yesterday afternoon after driving for awhile, pulling down my alley, the car got real shaky and has a hard time accelerating. this morning i noticed that the tailpipe is shaking good and makes a puttputtputt noise that is noticeable in the car with windows up. since i've owned it, this car has had a bad exhaust smell of some sort, so is it an exhaust problem? i had a new tail pipe and resonator put in in december

[pind]

Not 100% sure here, may be barking up the wrong waterfall, but that bit about the bad exhaust smell tells me that most likely your cat is going bad. ( Hence, smells like dead cat ) anyway, might want to get that checked out before you dive feet first into something more complicated, and end up landing on your head.
I have had trouble with these units before, so this is the basis for the suggestion, good luck

[rruddfan21]

thanks for the suggestion...i'l check the exhaust

[geozukigti]

I'd go with the cat too. But it's also likely that you may have dropped a cylinder for some reason. Makes the engine run really shaky. But the cat's in the metros are prone to clogging. And that would make it run like garbage too.

[rruddfan21]

spark plug wire somehow worked itself off the distributor cap and it was only running 2 cyl. fine now