I suspect my ignition coils are bad; (I have a slight miss at idle speed, and extreme miss and hesitation under load), and i followed the instructions on multiple threads on the org to test them with a ohm meter.

However, the problem is that my ohm meter only shows any readings on the 200 ohm setting when touching coil pin connections (-1, +2) or (+1, -2) (left to right) when looking at the coil.
The markings on the coil show pin 1 is -, pin 2 is +, and pin 3 is E.
Nothing registers at all if you touch any combination involving pin3 on the coil connectors. The results I got from all of the coils from just touching pins 1 & 2 range from 1.2 to 1.5. Are the coils bad? Am I doing something wrong? Can 3rd Gen VE30DE coils be tested in this way? What am I doing this wrong? My numbers look nothing like anyone else's numbers in all of the postings that I've read on the org.

Please help...

 

You can just unplug the coils while the engine is running, one at a time, to find which one is not working. Have you checked the injectors? Use a mechanics stethoscope to listen to each one if you have not already...

Good luck!

 

I am not sure how much searching you have done, but I had a thread about this many years ago.

Basically, I had to "trial and error" each coil pack under load.

A Nissan Tech I talked to said that sometimes the coil packs will look OK and test out OK (with an ohm meter) but fail under load. His theory was that certain types of spark plugs (Bosch, maybe Splitfire) damage the coil packs.

Anyway, what I had to do was get one each of a front and rear. I would swap just one out with what was in there, drive it on the freeway and try to get the car to cause the issues. It turns out that one of my rear coil packs was bad.

It's unfortunate that our cars are very advanced, yet use OBD1, which generally means most of our issues like this are trial and error.

Good luck

 

My bad coils were pretty obvious. My car ran as if it had a bad injector and when I pulled out the coils to check em out, the one that was bad had huge cracks in it. Threw a new one in and was good to go.

Wow, you could test em with a stethoscope? Had no idea. What are you suppose to listen for?

 

my 92 fsm shows @0.8 ohms is good,(i think this means k ohms)
testing middle and left prongs if you are holding it right side up
with the prongs pointing towards you

if you end up testing injectors remember you test the rear bank
by unplugging the sub harness by the upper intake manifold
(much easier than removing the upper intake manifold)