My ford ranger had a pinging noise in the engine I thought it was a rocker arm the other day the noise stopped and now it has no power it will still start and the engine is running with no noise. It runs now like one of the spark plugs wires are off but new spark plugs new wires and everything is fine there. So could it be in the distributer or what? No smoking no sounds not sure where to go from here.

 

What motor are we working on here?

​​​Since it was making a racket and now it runs like it's down one cylinder, I would start by checking compression.

 

1988 ford ranger 2.3L