I have a 2000 honda civic ex and it recently started running really rough. It seems to idle fine but when i attempt to accelerate it resists hard. It sounds like it is bogging down. The car seems to accelerate faster at half throttle than at full. Car will not excede 70mph. While the car is accelerating, it gets burst's of power and failures and usually when it hits vtec, the car rapidly backfires. Im not quite sure what is going on. My guess is the spark plugs. But when the car was at idle, i pulled each of the spark plugs and each one of them made a difference. Can spark plugs be bad and still deliver partial power?

 

Could be a clogged catalytic converter.

 

if the exhaust is plugged wouldn't that cause backfiring like what he said?^^

 

check the frikkin basics people, timing, ign. timing

 

the timing was fully advanced on the car, and i loosened the distributor and retarded the timing to normal and that made it all worse. When i put it back to fully advanced, it was worse than it was initially. Never had a honda act like this to me.

 

I'm having the same issue. 96 civic ex will drive fine and then out of nowhere bogg down when you try to accelerate then it backfires. Sometimes it will bogg down and then it will accelerate just fine! it happens at random. Changed the fuel filter, spark plugs and cables, and distributor cap. I get it back from the mechanic and it runs great for a month.. Then the problem starts again. Its at the mechanic now and they said the coil was bad. But what if i pay again and get it back and the same problem remains?! anybody have any solutions? at this point i'm desperate.