My car has been running rough lately. It's noticeable when I start it up in the morning, then gets progressively worse as I drive down the highway. After about 20 minutes, it misfires enough to cause a CEL.

Two things that may be of interest: I had a spark plug wire that kept comming loose, and I attributed the problem to that. But I just crimped the wire better and now it's making good connection and the problem did not stop. And I am leaking coolant from somewhere on the front of the engine.

First I was thinking that maybe the loose wire caused the plug to be fouled, but then why would it get worse as I drive? And someone told me the water pump on these is internal... I thought that maybe the water was comming for a leaky water pump.

So either I have a fouled plug and a cracked hose, or worst case maybe my headgasket is blown outwards. My oil looks fine.

I'm going down right now to take a closer look at the head/block joint to check for coolant and to pull the plugs and check the condition. Any thoughts?

 

Ok, so now I just figured out that I put this in the wrong section.

But anyways, I took the ignition apart and everything looked good untill I noticed that the tops of the spark plugs were scorched. So that led me to the problem: bad contact from the wires to the plugs.

These are NAPA spark plug wires and I've had problems with them since I bought them. So buyer beware.

 

buy new plugs and try that....if those get burned out then get different wires.

 

if that doesn't work don't overlook the O2 sensor. that obvisously will cause a CEL and cause your car to run rough.

 

definatly bad wire...

had same problem with my truck... ran great cold.... but once it warmed up it missed hard!!!!!!
replaced plugs no change.... then replaced the plug wires and it fixed it.... i asume one of the wires where cracked...... but i never could see a bad spot... just had to replace them all...
still runnen strong!

 

Thanks guys.

 

you would **** your pants if you knew how many times even a good running stock/bolt on honda has a cyl mis-fire. I'll say this though, after I blew my Y7 sky high I pulled codes for the fun of it and I had 4 codes, a mis fire on #1 cyl, a mis fire on #2 cyl, a mis fire on #3 cyl and last but not least..........*drum roll* a mis fire on #4 cyl

 

well with a blown engine, I'd expect all 4 cylinders to misfire

 

Well it blew because 2 rods got shredded and the same 2 pistons rings pretty much did the same thing. I guess that's what a 18psi spike will do on a 9psi tune lol

 

Has anyone else had connection poblems with NAPA plug wires? The problem with mine was the connectors were sloppy and I had to crimp them down so they would be tight on both the cap and plugs.