I have a 98 Legacy with the 2.2 with about 211,000 miles. I've replaced the spark plugs and wires with NGK but I'm still getting a miss fire cylinder 1 code. Just before the check engine light comes on the car gets a hesitation then the check engine light comes on and the car will run okay after that. Does anyone know what could be causing this to happen? I'm not sure what to check or replace to get this to stop any and all help is appreciated.

 

 

Hows your coil pack look? Some times the Leeds that the plug wire snap on to get corroded. You can use sand paper and clean them up.

Edited January 21, 201511 yr by Prwa101

The coil pack looks good I didn't see any sings of corrosion on it.  

Edited January 21, 201511 yr by krudy

Could be a faulty plug.

You could try switching that #1 plug with another, and see what happens.

Swapping plug and wire is a good idea to see if the misfire moves.

 

have the valves ever been adjusted?

how is the gas mileage?  i wonder if fuel injectors could be hosed?

how old is the timing belt?

 

more diagnosis questions:

 

how long as it been doing this?

 

any recent engine work in the past year or two?

 

is it completely random, always when it's first started, always when warm, always when coasting, always when going up hill, worse in winter/summer, worse when humid/raining, only when accelerating, etc?

Gary asks some very important questions.

 

what exact conditions is this happening under? outside temps? humidity levels? cold/warm starts?

 

I was getting an intermittent misfire on cyl 2 - only when it was damp out - dry weather didnt produce the problem, and only on a cold start (after sitting overnight).

Symptoms where similar to what you described - slight hesitation/roughness, then it would set the code, and after a moment or two it would run fine...

 

turned out I had a bad coil pak that was arcing externally - I could actually see it when I popped the hood one day when it was acting up. it would stop arcing after it warmed up and things expanded & dried out with the heat. swapped out the coil pak with another used one - no more problems.

 

shot a short video of the problem - can be seen here.

Edited January 22, 201511 yr by heartless

I have not tried to swap the plugs yet but to answer the question -

 

I've had the car for about 100,000 and never adjusted the valves

The gas mileage seams to be about the same from the time I've owned it I really don't check it every time I fill up but I'm getting about the same amount of miles out of a tank with in 10-15 miles

The timing belt has about 40000 on it

It has started doing this off and on for about the last 2-3 months

No engine work done to it but oil changes the oil difference in the oil I'm using is a full synthetic high mileage oil  vs. a high mileage only

most of the time when it happens is after it sits over night and I start it up in the morning to warm up and the tep. gage shows that it's warm and the heat is kicking in the car and it will still do it at that point. It will happen up a hill or even on the flat. it hasn't happened in the summer time to me just these last few months when it got really cold out. It will kick on when I'm accelerating or even when I'm just holding the car at road speed it happens at random times.  

try swapping the plug first, see what that does (if anything)

 

if no change, try swapping the plug wire next.

 

remember, only do one thing at a time, then drive it to see if there are any changes from that one thing.

Try this, go out to the car at night, open hood, start engine and then observe the area around the coil pack.  A common problem with coils is not that the coil itself goes bad but that the housing cracks and the spark jumps through the housing to the nearest ground.  It can usually be seen at night.

I have this misfire too. Im going to look at the cool pack. first one to fix it tell the other!