1990 Chevy Lumina car doesnt accelorate and dies out after

Does it blow any kind of smoke when you try to throttle it?

Yes it blows black smoke and my neighbor was saying that the car is running rich on its gas mixture.
When it died out yesterday it took me about 2 hours for it to cool down and restart. I also had to take off theair filter and leave the filter box open to run it.

Black smoke = fuel related. This can be several things. O2 sensor, map sensor, injectors, and even the ecm. You need to get it scanned by the dealership. The cheap $400 pepboys/autozone scan wont find the issue. A full scan is the only one that will tell you what is wrong. I went thru the exact same problem, replaced my converter, mufflers, fuel pump, filter, cleaned the injectors, new map sensor all to no avail. Turns out after a "full" scan it was the ecm telling my injectors to stay open too long. Dont waste your money, get a full scan. Plain and simple. In most cases, the dealership will do it for free.

I would like to know if the converter has been taken out if there would be any serious problems with fuel problems?I just found out that the converter had been taken out prior to me buying the car and piped directly to the muffler. Luckily for me I dont have epa testing on my car done in the area I live in.
Also a couple of friends who have drove the car said it might also be a vaccum problem too.
Is there any good car care / repair books you can suggest to add to my library for my car. Or might there be any of these books online so I dont get charged an arm and a leg? I am a novice on the Mechanical side of things and I am trying to use as little money as possible to get this old car back into shape. Thanks in ADVANCE!

When I had vacuum probs, I bought the silicon kit at pepboys for 25 bucks and redid them all. No having the converter off wont affect anything, very little hp gain "nothing worth taking it off for". But since you are getting black smoke I would definately check the 02, map, injectors, tps and iac sensors. Injectors being the most expensive. Try redoing your vac lines then do a complete upper intake cleaning. You can do that yourself with a can of deep creep. Read the instructions on the can, its very easy to do and makes a world of difference.