For about 6months or so my car has been hesitating when I come out of a complete stop and step on the gas but after a few seconds it kicks in. It has always bothered me a little but it never was a major problem; we had the 30,000 mile service on it a couple of months ago and had emissions test ran on it when they did the inspection about a month or so ago and the only thing that threw the test off was a gas cap, so I replaced it but nobody every mentioned anything about any other problems, so I just dismissed it as "that was just the way the car runs:" Last night while driving home it all of a sudden started idleing really weird, it was sputtering and almost sounded like it was going to die when I would stop and when I would drive it made a clanking type sound and sputtered the whole time, the MIL light was also on and flashing the whole time. I took it to one mechanic today that simply got up under it and noticed that the catalytic converter was glowing red (hot) on one end of it but they could not work on my car because they did not have the right equipment. I then took it to another shop and after running diagnostic, they said it shot some codes, so they checked it out and seemed to find that there was oil leaking and it had gotten onto the spark plugs and he also said something about 2 cylinders and a valve cover gasket; they said that they did not beleive that the catalytic converter needed to be replaced at this time based on their findings, they beleive it was getting hot only because of the problems with the other issues. Has anyone had this happen and does the diagnosis seem logical? They are charging me $97 for the diagnostic and $367 for parts and labor to fix these things.