So I drive to colorado springs to pick up a friend, car is running great, no problems

I get to castle rock on the way back, and we stop at sonic for some food, it's fairly cold out...

On the way home, I noticed a small pudder under throttle, I immediately called my mechanic and he said it's probably a u-joint, it can make it feel like it's missing, and we'll look at it in the morning, I didn't think anything of it.

About 20 minutes later, after I had dropped off my friends, the pudder turned into a straight missing, and threw me a flashing SES (I'm assuming this means misfire), At that point I pulled over, and noticed small puffs of smoke coming from underneath my hood...

It didn't hit me right away until I popped the hood and saw that my ******* Y-pipe was glowing so red it looked like I had a godammed underbody kit

What in gods name under normal driving conditions (or even extreme punishment) could cause a motor to just start running a lean condition of this sort, I've never seen this happen before

I let it cool for over an hour, then I drove it a few more miles to somewhere besides the side of a highway to park it without risk of it being hit on the side of the highway.

Any feedback is appreciated, I'll post codes in the morning after we get it back to the shop, hopefully there was no major damage to my engine during this ordeal.

edit: engine is entirely stock, as is the tune, no major work has ever been done to it, and I have NEVER had engine problems. It has 106k

It is my daily driver and I don't have enough to replace it, am I looking at a dead motor here, or since it started the second time and drove (with the pudder again, but only enough to park it) could I get lucky and possibly be looking at something small?

I posted in another thread as well that I had a code being thrown that was an o2 sensor heater undervolt, and someone said it was nothing and happens all the time, so I didn't think anything of it... Could that also have something to do with it? I know o2's read A/F correct?

 

I think I read somewhere that someone had this problem and it turned out to be a clogged up cat, in turn, it also ruined the o2 sensor. Maybe you could start there, but either way, see if you can get that ses code pulled.
I think pepboys or autozone can pull the code for you if you dont have a scanner

 

Sounds like clogged cats to me.

 

If you are misfiring and dumping raw fuel it will heat up your exhaust in a hurry. Don't panic, start by finding the miss - plugs, wires, coil, etc.

 

alright the only code it threw was P0300

random misfires

were tracing it back, hopefully it was just a clogged cat.