Hi everybody,

Just to ponder a couple of things to you guys.

I have been battling low power and pinging for a while. I have been suspecting bad coils or maybe a bad MAF?

2 weeks ago, after I made a quick stop after a 30 min drive, the car buckled like crazy upon restart and then I got the 'Check Engine Soon' light.

The code was cyl 5 misfire, so I did order the coil but have not installed yet.

That day 2 weeks ago, the car ran fine after I stopped and the car cooled down so I am guessing the main problem was that the coil soaked the heat from the engine at that quick stop and made the coil really misbehave, after it cooled down, it went back to 'normal'.

Well, since then, the car has felt better, not up to complete strength but it definitely feels better than before. To make matters more confusing, the 'Check Engine Soon' light went off yesterday. I guess the computer resets the light if it does not encounter a code within the last X miles or starts.

Would anybody have any input here?

I am still planning on changing that coil and spark plugs but I wonder if anybody has experienced something as weird as this.

Thanks again!

 

change it and move on...

 

Absolutely but I always like to know the variables (heat, humidity, etc.) on a situation like this as I am sure this won't be the first time I will need to deal with this.

It just doesn't make sense that the coil suddenly 'stopped' working 2 weeks ago and then now it's not perfect, but not dead for sure....

Thanks.

 

Mine did this too. It would work fine and twice within a month the tcs/abs/mil light came on. The problem is intermittent. I'm ASSUMING that when the ecu detects the misfire so many times it MAY shut the cylinder down completely and set all 3 lights to prevent detonation/preignition. This is when it gets even worse.
Why it only detects it misfiring enough to shut it down on occassion is only your guess.
Mine did it once at start up on a 60 degree day with a cold engine and the other time sitting at idle with a completely warmed engine.

 

EXCELLENT info. This is what I was looking for. Thanks for taking the time.

I understand computers and electronics (and physics) so it didn't make sense to the engineer part in me, so, I wanted to know other cases to try to guess what the computer algorithm could be and other possible variables involved, etc.

If others have had wacky coil/misfire experiences, please post them.

Thanks again.