Alright, I searched and searched for days and each problem seems to be a little different from mine so here goes.

Symptoms: On starting, the throttle has to be blipped or it will stall out, after that, it generally idles fine. Sometimes, for about 10-15 seconds, the idle will bounce up and down but after driving off it will level off and run normal.

After that, really when it warms up, if I stop at a light it will have random misfiring. The car will get a little jolt and it is in no way in any sort of rhythm. When driving under power, at ANY point in the power band, it will have misfiring, a noticeable loss in power but its faint.

I have swapped the coil pack with another cylinder and the code stayed there. I swapped it this afternoon with a DIFFERENT one just to make sure, ill check the codes again tomorrow. I am getting an average of 24 mpg still but this problem is just annoying.

I have seafoamed through the break booster and the gas tank and it remained.

Another weird thing was I changed all of the plugs out recently with NGK-r plats and the front bank tips were all red, the rear bank were the same except for that one cylinder, the plug had oil on the WHITE part of it. Just a little but enough to be like . I pulled the new plug today and while there was a faint residue, it was not inside the coil pack tube and not enough to cause a connection issue.

Sorry for the wall o text. Any ideas or troubleshooting tips?

Here is a pic of the plug pulled today (about 1000 miles on it):

 

By the looks of the plug you have a lot of dry white soot on there which indicates weak ignition or you are running rich and those would both cause misfiring. Check your coils. Is it more brown than white? If its more brown and ashy then it could be from using to many oil/fuel additives. THe oil problem is a bit worse, you would need to change your valve guide seals or worse, piston rings to keep that oil off of it. Can learn a lot from your spark plugs. Most likely you have worn valve guides or piston rings that causes some oil to seep and thus your build-up and running slightly rich as well cause that white build-up, little bit of both I suppose

 

I could pull another plug to see if they look like that as well. I don't really ever add anything to the fuel or oil except for that can a seafoam right before I changed these plugs (I ran it empty before the change). The engine has power its just a random misfiring, no smoke blowing out what so ever. Probably should have also said the motor has 170k on it so, for these being tanks, I think worn out guides causing this would be a little premature on it. I might be able to get an ohmeter to test the coil plug itself but I have never done that and would need a guide.

 

Try to swap back just to regular NGK (they are cheap) and see if it changes. I went to platuim and mine was doing something very similar to this....it was very annoying.

 

Well while driving today it went full dead. Still reading cyl 1 misfire. Did the screw driver test on the injector and it is firing fine. Pulled the spark plug and looks just like the other. At idle, I can pull the other two plugs from the coil packs and it makes a difference but on cylinder one it makes no difference. Here is the kicker, I stopped on the way to work and bought a new coil pack and put it in, no difference, still there. WTF? Could the wiring harness be broken?

 

Check the camsensor

 

What code(s) do you get? 0606 = P0303 = cylinder 3. You said "still reading cylinder 1." Are you getting multiple codes?

 

Thats def possible too. Somehow one of the wires that connects to the coil clip got frayed and it sent a 1320(random misfire) on my ride. If your actually stalling because of the problem then I would look to the harness because it could be 3 cyl's that arent firing correctly. Bank 1(firewall side) always seems to have more problems than bank 2, its weird. That plug shows you that a misfire is happening though thats for sure. Every time I take off my UIM I baby the harness because the wires are so damn old. In a perfect world I would replace the entire harness or most of it but its a ton of work and im about over messing with the electrical gremlins these 4th gen's have

 

Sorry, meant to change it. It's a 0608. It was 0606,swapped coil packs and it moved to 0608. So, I bought a new coil pack but no change... Hence my confusion. I tried te unplugging while running thing and cylinder 1, rear bank pass side had no change. I also have code 0201 now but I believe that's from unplugging the coils while it is running.

Might also help to mention this misfire has been a long running problem. It dropped to 5 cylinders a few weeks ago and I took it to the shop. They diagnosed a cylinder 4 dead injector, front bank dead center. Replaced and it was fine but still had that random misfiring.

And by full dead I meant that one cylinder. It's drivable just rough idle and noticeably under powered.

 

Sorry to keep posting a lot but I just want all the details here possible. When I did that injector test earlier, I took a screwdriver and put it on the top of the injector and then to my ear. There is a very noticable tick. I did it on one of the front ones too to make sure that was it. I just went back out and did it again and the tick from that injector is a little deeper and just listening to the motor there is a normal ticking. Its hard to tell whether it is actually firing or not. Any other ways of testing it without pulling the intake mani off? I have been trying to avoid that for a while.

 

not for the rear injectors no. Gotta take it off. You can test the harness but not the injector itself

 

rough idle can be caused by vacuum leaks as well.

I'm having a similar issue with cylinder 1 misfiring but my plug doesn't look like that. Subscribed to see what you figure out.

 

Yeah but this is more than a rough idle. It is an obvious cylinder misfire. Under load or not, the exhaust note alone makes it very obvious (there was a more free flowing muffler on the car when I got it). I am starting to lean towards a dead injector on that cylinder but I want to confirm it before I go ahead and pull off the intake manifold and what not. I am getting ahold of a friend who is a service writer at Nissan to see if I can get their techs to cheaply diagnose it.

 

Alright, after many tests and changes the solid codes are 0304 (Knock sensor just because of other codes) and 0608, cylinder 1 misfire.

I decided to do a compression test on the cylinder to ensure that it was not blown and came out at 120, so thats good.

I also pulled the coil pack and put the spark plug in it and held against the mani and cranked it, solid spark at a good rhythm. So that leaves me at only one possible problem: The injector is bad.

I will keep yall updated and let me know if you have any ideas. Just ordered one. The write shows how to replace #1 without fully pulling the manifold. I really really hope this fixes the problem and gets my car back to normal. My fiance just had her car blow up and we had to buy a new one and I don't want two car payments.

 

New injector and she is back up and running. Best she has ran since I got her. Still has a random popping at idle after driving for a bit but I will diagnose that down the road. It was a ***** getting back there. Just over 4 hours for everything but I got to clean my IACV and throttle body a bit. Couldn't get to the egr tube but I am sure it probly needed it.

 

Well, good job and keep us posted. at least you got a CEL XD

 

Well at first there was no CEL. I just pulled the codes and they were there. After it got worse it flashed and then stayed lit. I still have a random misfire at idle that I need to go see if some ghost codes are there but for the most part she is running great.