My Protege with 301k miles starts and idles fine, but taking off from a stop is really slow, and going up a slight grade will bog down so I have to downshift to 4th gear. I hooked up my scan tool to monitor sensors and notices that spark advance goes to around 0 when starting from a stop. I put my car in neutral yesterday and accelerated to 1500 rpm and noticed the spark advance went to 1 degree. I have swapped out the tp sensor, crank sensor and cam sensor with parts from junkyard vehicle with no change. I used to get a P0300 but it hasn't come back since I cleared the code a month ago. I replaced the coils and wires. I replaced the MAF a few months ago with a part I bought online for cheap. I could really use some good advice.

 

When accelerating your spark advance should retard, that's just how things operate to avoid blowing up the engine. How long have you owned the car and when did the slow acceleration start?

 

I have owned the car about 5 years. Problem began about 3 months ago.

 

As a test, pull the upstream O2 sensor and take it out for a drive, yes, it will be noisy, but if the car drives better than I'm thinking you might have a clogged catalytic converter.