EGR and EOP problems

[Chrisn27]

I know very little about cars so please forgive me if this is an easy question. The car has a hard time accerlating. I push all the way down on the gas and I get no jump. Took it to AutoZone and asked a couple questions and they suggested it could be my transmission and reffered me to a shop. I took it there and they ran the test and it came back as no transmission problem but EGR Flow CKT Range/Performance and Engine Oil Pressure Switch Circuit. They reffered me to another shop and he was swamped today but wants to look tomorrow. He suggested that since it is not too old and it has only 60k miles on it, the EGR could be cleaned. The car is a 2002 Chevy Malibu.

Questions:

What does this all mean? they tried to explain it but I need to read it for myself.

Can I fix it myself and is it hard? If I can't fix it myself will it be expensive. Excess of over 300 dollars?

Thank you.

[maxwedge]

Welcome to AF. Slow down some here. Does this poor acceleration problem seem to be something new, what are the codes, does it idle rough, hesitate, lots of relevant info missing. Did the trans shop feel anything wrong with the car other than find these codes? Has the check engine lite been coming?

[Chrisn27]

Yes this is a new problem as of Saturday. It is my wife's car she told me about it. the codes were P0404B and P1189c. It doesn't seem to idle rough but it does hesitate when trying to accelerate. The trans shop did not thing anything else was wrong other then the codes. My wife said that the check engine light did come on yesterday but when I drove it last night to listen and feel the problem I did not see it come on or today. I did drive it for about 20 minutes last night.

[maxwedge]

Have the shop you are set up to go to, do a full scan they should be capable of diagnosing the problem based on a road test and as I said a full scan, no one here can go beyond general advice for a general performance issue such as yours, there are multiple possibliies, some not related to the strored codes.