Yep, it broke down on me today
Now to find out what went wrong... But for the past few weeks I have been hearing a faint off beat ticking sound, coming from the top of my engine, at low RPM's, and got louder as the car warms up, but it seemed to stop at around the VTec point. Then today, I was driving in 4th gear at around 3.7k RPM's going down hill with little throttle, then it started to bog down, then just lost all power after a few seconds and I pulled over. I tried to crank it again after a few minutes, and it started up after a few cranks, then I drove about 20 feet and it was smoking and backfiring bad out the exhaust and intake for the first time.. then lost all power again, and will not start now.... doesnt sound good.. I took off the valve cover, and everything looks fine under it and when I crank it.. I checked out the timing on the cams and distributor and it looks fine. I think I am going to do a compression test next. Then check the fuel filter, fuel pump and injectors, then if thats all good, I dont know what it could be.. Anyone have any ideas?

 

usually when you hear back fire from you intake, your are miss firing or it's in the wrong firing order. maybe you timing jumped?

 

i had a similar problem with my car. in the past week my rpm gauge has been going crazy along with some bogging but it seem to get worse pretty quick and today it started to misfire and then the motor just stopped. It would crank over but would not start. I started to smell gas so i had a feeling it was not a fuel issue well anyways my friend had a similar problem and gave me the advise to change out the coil in the distributor so I did and it was $60 at autozone and changed it out and problem was fixed.

not sure if this might fix your problem but u could give it a try