Cylinder 1 misfire... What I have found so far.

[harrymaneuvers]

So this morning I fire up the leggy to go to work like every other day.

I instantly notice that the idle is REALLY rough... to the point where the car is slighly bobbing up and down.

As I go to drive away, I also notice that the car is not right... no power and sputtering.


I have a 8:30 meeting this morning and I live about 2 miles away from my work so I decide to chance it and just take it into work.

After about 300 feet of driving with something noticeably wrong, the CEL starts flashing to warn me of a misfire.

I drive the car up to about 40 mph and then come to my first stop light. The RPM's come down to about 600 RPM with the car still noticeably misfiring.


Without doing ANYTHING... just sitting at that light for about 15 seconds... the misfire goes away... car idles completely normal. I take off from the light and accelaration is normal, no flashing CEL everything feels fine.


I come to the next stoplight and when I come to a stop, the hard idle is back and the CEL starts flashing again to let me know it is misfiring.

It stays that way for another mile until I get to my work when I shut off the car.


I am wondering what would cause the issue and then go away seemingly on its own and then come back. The car drove perfect yesterday which was the first time driving it in 5 days of sitting.


I just did (4 weeks ago) the valve cover gaskets, spark plug gaskets, rubber washers and new V-Power plugs gapped accordingly.


I am initially suspect of my plug wires (ac delco brand replaced about 4 years ago)

[harrymaneuvers]

Ok so it is now lunchtime:

I get pops to drive me over his OBDII reader so that I dont have to drive 6 miles to the closes autozone to find out what is up. I circle the parking lot with the car still noticeably misfiring. One code: p0301

So instantly roll up my dress shirt sleeves and take out the plug wire for that cylinder. It wasnt wet with oil like it used to be before I replaced the spark plug seals...


IT WAS WET WITH CLEAR WATER...?!?! I have never seen this before. The plug wires do sit just above the seating ring on the valve cover but it has been that way for over 4 years... and it hasnt rained here in two or three weeks?!?!


I limp my car home (where I am now) and as soon as I get out I notice that there is a rather loud and steady PUT PUT coming from my muffler. So I kill the motor and dig in under the hood.

I pull plug wire 1 from the coilpack... its green with corrosion. I then take a look at each of the other coil-plug connections.

Plug wire 2 is corroded.

Plug wires 3 and 4 are not corroded at all.


So out of curiosity, I swap plug wires 1 and 3 completely. I start it up and it sounds good!!

As soon as I pull out of my driveway and give it gas... it feels 100% better... UNTIL I get up to about 3500 RPM... then it starts to stutter and wave in and out of power.


I am going to get a new set of plugs on my way back to work and try to keep the RPM's low.

[harrymaneuvers]

Yay! Three posts with no responses...

So I cleaned off the terminals a little more and drove down to the stealership for some new OEM plugs. cleaning off the terminals seemed to have completely eliminated the problem but I am still going to replace the wires.

[racingking951]

WATER ON THE PLUG?!?!

Was it maybe gas or something building up from the misfire? At least its better now

[Garrison]

I'm sorry to bump a year old thread like this, but did changing your wires solve the problem? I have a misfire code that I've been dealing with for a while on cylinder one.

My coil/wire both look fine, but I haven't tried swapping my 1 & (frayed) 3 wires to test it.

[harrymaneuvers]

Yes it was the wires for me...


Pulling them off the coil pack... I could see that one or two of them had green corrosion around the boot inside the end of the wire.