My relative's mechanic is out of town for a while, and I know very
little about the maintenance of this hand me down manual shift car, but
recently, it's been losing power to the point that it's almost
undrivable. (And it's not a Turbo car). It starts off ok for a few
blocks, but as you have to stop and start, at stop signs, etc., then it
really lags. And if you try to take it on an open road and can get it
into 3rd or 4th, the fastest it will go is ~30-40 kmh in those gears
(and of course, it will shortly start to shudder due to lack of speed
per gear). And all that's with the gas peddle to the floor in each
gear.

The car did have a catalytic convertor repair a few months ago (I think
he replaced it for the Drive Clean checkup), and I am wondering if this
could be it (?) because a few weeks ago, strange, long fibreglass black
hair started coming out the exhaust pipe. I pulled around 4 chunks of
it out over a 2 week period. (It looked like a silky squirrels tail).

I've checked all the basic things that I can: the spark plugs (one was
a bit wet, the other 3 bone dry and pretty clean), the air filter (a
bit off white, but nothing dire), fuel filter, checked the oil (also a
bit dirty, but still topped up).

I'm assuming the car is flooding because I can smell raw gas when I
start it up. However, there is no leaking trail left behind as it
drives away and no oil leaks left where it's parked. I did notice a
vibrating sound earlier in the week, coming from either the exhaust or
muffler area, a few days before the car started losing power. I thought
maybe the muffler was going, but now I see that the sound was just from
pushing the gas pedal all the way down and getting alot of noise, but
very little power. Anyone have any ideas on what could be going on
here? Thanks for any input.