last nite very suddenly my car started chugging and shaking and started sounding like a lawnmower. i pull over, pop the hood and find a spark plug wire loose. push it back down and it changes nothing. so i drive home. today i checked all my plugs (bosch platinum +4's) and they're in beautiful condition. so my dad comes out and tells me to start it up. i do. he then pulls a spark plug wire and the engine begins to struggle. puts it back and it runs the way it was before. pulls another plug (the second from the left facing the front of the car) and nothing changes. from this he concludes that i'm running on 3 cylinders. he suggested new spark plug wires and began to look for the distributor. realizing its behind the engine under the intake manifold he began cursing american cars and went back in the house.
will new plug wires fix my problem? something tells me its more complicated than that.
its a place to start ....... althow a compresion test would b good also
also don't waste your money on Bosch +4's the AC Delcos that come stock are better and cheaper.
-Chris
It sound more then just a bad wire. Test the wire by putting the plug on the the wire. Then place the bottom of the plug on the valve cover or a grounded part. Then crank the engine and watch for the spark.
Yeah dont drop $6 per plug for Plat 4s. I use AC-Delcos and they work great.
they were on sale for like 3 dollars a piece....
and beyond the point.
ok what should i look for, results-wise, with a compression tester? (which my dad has and i am capable of using)
check all 3 cylinders they should be pretty close. You'll be able to tell if one is lower.
I'd check the believed dead cylinder first then compare it to a live cylinder.
If you wanna test the plug and wire, just switch them out with another plug, another wire, and both and see which combinations work:
Original wire, known live plug
Known live wire, original plug
original plug, original wire, on a different terminal.
that will let you know if its an electrical problem and what it is.
-Chris
used a volt meter on the bad cylinder's wire.
no conductiviy..
so i bought som Xact spark plug wires.. 19.48 + 5% sales tax (MD)
i'll install one tomorrow morning, drive to school, come home, install the other 3 the next morning.
hopefully, problem solved.
PROBLEM NOT SOLVED ughh....
if it's not an electrical issue, what could it be?
today when i pulled up to school i smelled gasoline and burnt rubber.
i'll do the compression test if and when i get home today which will probably be like 7:30pm (eastern)
(forgot to mention i changed the bad wire this morning and drove it to school which is about 15 min)
(i smelled the burning rubber and gasoline yesterday so no i didn't leave the wire hanging out touching some metal.)
a little reading and i'm thinking maybe a bad coil but if it were so, wouldn't 2 spark plugs give me problems?
I know this is just off the wall but you've got a 2.0 OHC right. When I had my 1.8 one of the rocker arms,cam folowers whatever the name was? Broke wiped the lobe off the cam #4 cylinder and made it run like it was only on 3. Not sayin that this is your problem but look into the compression check.
2009 Ford Mustang V6
^^i'll look into that and hopefully its not that
i was just outside tinkering and i pulled the plug that was in the bad cylinder... its starting to become oily.... i'm scared now, the repair manual said that if a plug tip is oily that whatever's regulating my oil is failing and its flooding a cylinder (or something like that) and that doesn't sound good.
That sounds like it could be piston rings right there. but you need to check into it more.
2009 Ford Mustang V6
i have a friend who works at a GM dealership as a technician.. he brought me a spark plug wire so i returned the new ones and exchanged them for what i really needed, which was an ignition coil pack. so i'm either gonna throw this on now or tomorrow... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
how bout now!
*viciously opens repair manual to learn how to do this*
lol 2.0 coil packs suck!
1st 1st gen on air.....
He has a 89, it has a single coil and a dis, the 91-94s had the coil pack.. ok here is what to do.
*Stop wasting money on plugs and wires, get a set of Delcos and wires.
*do a wet and dry compression test on each cyl, do the dry first and then the wet, if there is any drastic changes in the supposedly dead cyl your rings are toast.
*after that pull the cam cover off and look and see if the intake and exhaust lobes are in good shape and look for metal shavings.
and try this, do a oil change with Valvoline Max-life 75K+ and get a can of engine restore, that stuff works wonders.
and if any of that don't help, you prob have a burnt or sticking valve or your rings and the cyl wall on the dead cyl are toast and your gonna need a rebuild.
P.S i also had a sunbird that ran on 3cyls, via a popped HG and a bad coil-pack
Ty (teh Otaku) wrote:He has a 89, it has a single coil and a dis, the 91-94s had the coil pack.. ok here is what to do.
*Stop wasting money on plugs and wires, get a set of Delcos and wires.
*do a wet and dry compression test on each cyl, do the dry first and then the wet, if there is any drastic changes in the supposedly dead cyl your rings are toast.
*after that pull the cam cover off and look and see if the intake and exhaust lobes are in good shape and look for metal shavings.
and try this, do a oil change with Valvoline Max-life 75K+ and get a can of engine restore, that stuff works wonders.
and if any of that don't help, you prob have a burnt or sticking valve or your rings and the cyl wall on the dead cyl are toast and your gonna need a rebuild.
P.S i also had a sunbird that ran on 3cyls, via a popped HG and a bad coil-pack
i just finished putting in the coil pack. look at the time of my last post. thats when i started. JESUS CHRIST THAT WAS TOUGH. had to have my dad help me.
but its running fine now
thank u
Good stuff. I'd give the car an oil change now though, you probably pumped a fair bit of gas into the oil from that dead cylinder.
Abby87Z24 (Now bagged) wrote:lol 2.0 coil packs suck!
why didn't you warn me... i posted in ur thread to, you must have seen mine.. lol
glad to hear things are working again. I remember my first car and all the repairs. Its best that your doing them yourself tho. Will save you literally hundreds of thousands of dollars thruout your life if not millions.
-Chris
Glad you got her running EA, my sunbird did the same thing when my cp whent bad, it ran good for awhyle and at random it ran like @!#$.
IamRascal wrote:glad to hear things are working again. I remember my first car and all the repairs. Its best that your doing them yourself tho. Will save you literally hundreds of thousands of dollars thruout your life if not millions.
well this is my second car but the first i had any say in the welfare of.
in 03, i inherited mom's 1990 hyundai excel GL 4 dr. i think it had a 1.8 or something but i'm not sure, i knew NOTHING about cars back then except how to drive an auto and how to check oil and fill the gastank... of course gas was 1.18 back then and i had no reason to fret over vehicle maintenance costs. i'm rambling, point is....
i am glad things are working also and i'm enjoying the learning/money saving experience of doing my own repairs...
thank you everyone for your input and wellwishing.
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