My friends car started acting really weird yesterday. Can anyone give me some symptoms of a cylinder misfire?

He said his exhaust sounds really bad and when he gets into higher RPMs like 2500-3000 his car shakes. So he's not driving it now but we're not sure what the problem is. And unfortunately his ECU screw is broke and just keeps spinning so he can't check for codes unless he takes it to the dealer.

 

Autozone is your friend (free code checks).

Sounds like a misfire to me... (from your description).

What year/mileage/maintenance history would help too...

 

Might be his MAF, especially if you are having problems in the higher RPM range.

 

Yeah I told him to go to autozone. I'm quite sure it's a misfire because he just told me that his CEL was blinking while driving and in the Nissan Manual it says that the CEL will do that if the misfire can damage the three way catalyst. So this sucks for him especially because he was just about to sell it. Now he has to get it fixed. I'm going to suggest changing spark plugs first but aside from that all the other tests that nissan suggests require tools I don't have.

 

Again, what year make, mileage?

It could be as simple as plugs or a bad coil or something more involved, like a bad injector.

 

True.dat

 

95 GXE I think about 99000