spark plug is fowled out?

[stevetwors]

here is what happened:

one of my coil packs went bad because of water dripping on it. it was visibly different from the others, it was all rusty and nasty looking. i verified this was the problem because when i disconnect each coil pack this was the only one that didnt cause a dip in idle or change in idle.

i bought a used one from a very awesome member on this board chris something. when i put this one in, it still runs rough but not nearly as bad as before.

the car is herky jerky for example when you get on it when rpms are low in the lower gears like 2nd gear, around 2krpm. when the rpms get high enough it sort of clears out the clogginess and zooom! this has been getting worse within last 1k miles or so.

it definitely doesnt have the power it used to, it definitely runs rough. i also have a "searching" idle that dips down to almost stalling then goes back to just under 1krpm, over and over.

and now just yesterday, check engine light came on. wasnt on after restarting the car. i understand the code is now stored in memory and i can jump two pins on the ecu connector and this will cause the display to flash to tell me the code? can i get a diy guide for this?

what do you think is the problem? when the coil pack was bad/going bad, it was intermittent, it would work and not work and you would feel the power kick in when it would work. i think what happened is this caused very often a rich fuel condition from fuel not being burnt from previous stroke and when it would work this would burn rich fuel mixture and fowl out the plug. the other theory is the used coil pack is not as strong as the others so there is an inbalance?

excuse me for all the questions. thanks for any help.

 

[Larry Bastanza]

What year car? How many miles? Do you have a CEL?

 

[Jett]

spark plug is fowled out?

Tastes just like chicken?:wink:

 

[stevetwors]

its a 92 with 142k miles on it.

Just an update:

When I drove home from work after making the first post in this thread, when i got home and parked i saw some slight smoke coming from the back. the smoke was coming from the back right catalytic converter which is fed from the back of the motor.

it was GLOWING RED HOT. it was so hot that it was making a small amount of smoke. the other catalytic converter was normal.

so this means i have a lean fuel condition on that side of the motor? i hope i haven't burned up the valves. I have barely driven this car. I have only driven maybe 500-1k miles since the engine starting running a bit rougher than normal.

i still haven't had a chance to do a CEL code lookup.

 

[angus]

so you drove a thousand miles with something wrong?

 

[stevetwors]

so you drove a thousand miles with something wrong?

my daily driver was broken. im not sure how many miles its been. about 2 tanks of gas. but the gas mileage has been noticeably worse. its hard to say how much ive driven it but ive driven it gingerly only when i absolutely needed it and couldnt get a ride.