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[Windolicker]

I have a 91  1.6l n/a 5spd manual Capri conv. I must say every issue I've had  someone on this board has had. I just wish I would have found you earlier. Thank you. Now my problem one day started the car noticed rough idle , then when driving a noticeable change of power ,sound and feel to the motor.it took longer to accelerate but still drivable. My thoughts were timing belt belt jump, the "wet connector issue" or plug wire dist. Cap ect.. Point is I drove in that condition for about 2 months . (Procrastination ,money fear of major issue).so one day I'm looking at it and while motors running I start pulling each plug wire both from dis cap and from plug end. Had good all wires both ends. But I noticed there was a change in RPGs when plug wire pulled except # 2 no change at all. Freaking spark plug . Procastination had reared it ugly head . But at least nothing major so I thought. So as put every thing back to drive home, put in gear and when I let out the clutch all of a sudden no power like I only had 5th gear some how made it home only 20 - 35mph possible . On my street started backing real loud sputtering had to get run to get half way up 20ft driveway . Car shut of distinct smell of burning oil some smoke I thought maybe tran. Diff something locked up but that's not the case.i replaced the #2plug gapped them both at .039 and what I heard from this site that disagreed with the book of .36 to . 39 help. So I'm going to borrow a timing  gun and look at the cat conv. But could use any pics input thoughts on what it might be. Also I've got your manual bookmarked very informative. I work in aerospace ryun cmm and faro arms but am out of work because of no car . I have to admit at 44 you guys are making me want to change careers and go back to being a grease monkey .

[WashiestSnake]

Are you sure its not your clutch, because the same happened to me. The car would pop out of gear after 30 and acceleration was horrid.

[Windolicker]

No I know enough about that's not it nor the drive train because every thing rolls freely. Clutch engages disengages fine .what I was trying to describe engine would start no problem you feather the throttle get rid of low end bogging or sputtering once the revs were up engine then seem ready as disengage the clutch it no power , i keep slipping the clutch  to keep the revs up enough for forward momentum once it moving est. 15 to 20 mph go to second repeat process till you get to third motor will not rev all the way out so fourth out of the question once momentum lost downshifting doesnt help. The weird thing is drove the to my local golf range hit some balls .started to when I ran into a buddy we starting discussing the the issue, put the hood up started and all I did was pull plug wires one at a time dist.end first then the plug end.that was it now I figure as long as I was driving it with bad #2 plug that all the unburnt fuel oil ect. Was gonna take a little bit to burn off.so in a nut I don't know how it went from a small to a large issue just by pulling plug wires while running.is some way that something shorted while arcing the wires to the head . Running with bad plug 2 months easy maybe three , I might have clogged up the cat conv. But I'm not sure how to check that

[chrispoe]

Sounds like you have a bad plug wire.

[Windolicker]

Well the #2 plug wasbad but none of the wires had kinks cuts tears or any other sign of where. Now did you say because I was pulling them out without that grip tool you think maybe I pulled then end off of the wire

[chrispoe]

So let me see if I got this right.
Your car started to have a rough idle and lost some power, but it was still drivable.
You tried to diagnose it by pulling plug wires one by one while running.(same thing I would have done)
You found pulling the wire off of plug 2 had no effect on the engine.
When you tried to drive the car right after doing the plug wire test, the engine performance became even worse then before. It’s now undrivable.

If this is what happened, I would say it’s highly likely that you had a plug wire starting to fail which was causing weak spark at your #2 plug. When you started to move the wires around, the plug wire then went completely bad and now you have no spark at plug #2.

You cannot visually inspect a spark plug wire to determine if it’s good or not. The only way to test a plug wire is with a spark tester like this one.
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/LIS0/50850/N0665.oap?ck=Search_N0665_-

As a general rule of thumb on these cars, whenever I am replacing the spark plugs, I also replace the plug wires, cap, and the rotor at the same time.