Driving to work tonight my 91 gxe (vg) started to run real rough. The rpm at idle dropped to around 500 and it seemed to be misfiring. When I got to work I cleaned the engine and noticed a tick coming from somewhere in the motor. It was not constant and it seems every time it made the tick the engine would misfire. The last week it was running fine but I noticed sometimes when I turned it off it would make a beep from inside. I dont know if this is the ecu storing a trouble code or what but it was running fine when the beep started. It was a single chirp beep and it didnt happen every time I shut it off. Anyone have any suggestions? My drive to and from work is 30min and I would hate to drive it home chugging all the way. Please help

 

the tick indicates you're missing a spark, which is a good thing, it means it's not a bad injector. Replace the bad wire, plug or at the worst replace the cap and rotor. Easiest possible scenerio is a plug wire not seated properly at the plug or distributor.

 

+1

The easiest way to find the bad wire is to wait until dark outside/pop the hood/start the car/look into each of the cylinder holes while the car is running,you should find that one of your spark plug wires will be sending it's "spark" through it's casing into the side of the cylinder head instead of the spark plug.

 

what it sounds like is it is missing a cyclender so turn the car on and one at a time take a spark plug wire out and the engine should die down if it does not then that cyclender is messed up or the injector is clogged

 

if the injectors are clogged sum seafoam and a heavy foot should help. I had sum clogged injectors and when i took my car in for sumthin else they tried to sell me a cleaning. a lot of flooring it and sum seafoam i beleive cleaned them well enough because now my idles smoother and doesnt misfire anymore.

 

Well the missfire has mysteriously gone away. When I played with the plugs on the injector rail I noticed one seemed to cause a bit of an engine hiccup. I never unplugged any of them I just jiggled them around. I guess I will wait till it starts doing it again then maybe unplug them and take a good look. I still occasionlly get that strange beep from inside though.

 

Mine did the exact same thing. I was driving home one night and it started missing real bad. I pulled over in the dark and tried to keep the hood from falling on me (bad hood shocks and didn't have the 2x4 in the trunk lol) and didn't see any sparks. I started playing with the plug wires and injector wires. The last injector wire towards the passeneger side seemed to casue change in the idle. it wasn't loose though. all of a sudden it cleared up. A few days later the car wouldn't start due to dirty terminals. Cleaned 'em up and no probs. don't know if it was related or not.

 

Corrosion is your enemy..

 

mine (92 VE5) is now misfiring after a deep creep seafoam treatment....but i think i know what mine is. I have oil in 2 sparkplug tubes so that might be it. I hate they have to be in the rear head tho.

 

I think that beep is coming from my keypad on the door!?! Oh yeah and oil on the plug boots will cause a misfire.

 

I have the same problem right now, thanks for the info.