Recently, from a steady 35 mph my '94 SLE suddenly lost severe power and I could hear loud exhaust-type sounding noise from the front half of the vehicle. We "crawled" home at a few mph for about a mile.

During inspection of the underside of the vehicle I noticed that the outlet pipe of the catalytic converter had fractured (a full 360 degrees) about an inch from the converter due to corrosion and stress. Also, by looking into the outlet end of the catalytic converter I noticed the honeycombs at that end are not plugged and appeared quite clean.

Background information: About two weeks prior to this incident, a technician read a P1406 history code (Exhaust Gas Recirculation Pintle Position Sensor Circuit) off of the vehicle. In addition, tonight I recorded data from the ECM using an OBD Diagnostics cable and TunerPro software on my laptop when test driving up our driveway from idle. The EGR Pos increased from 1.6% to a sporadic behavior peaking as high as 50%, the CCP Cycle increased from 13% to 34%, and the spark advance changed from 29 degrees to 26.5 degrees. Also, the airflow increased from 5 grams/sec to 11g/sec, the RPM increased from 730 rpm to 1050 rpm, the fuel base pulse increased from 4.25 ms to 6.75 ms, and the coolant temp was 180 F.

Please provide your thoughts on what may be causing the severe power loss. Also, if I must, is it OK to drive it to a shop? Thanks, in advance.