I have a random misfire on more than one cylinder of my engine. It sounded like it was running a little rough so I went and hooked up the timing light, and there is a random misfire on at least cylinders 1,3,5, and 7. I am guessing that it is either the coil or the spark plug wires that are acting up and not the spark plug since there isn't any current traveling throught the wire. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I would start simple.

Clean your dizzy cap and rotor of any residue that has built up, or even just get a new MSD kit for 30$.

Also, wait until it is dark and fire up your engine. Look for any blue arcing from the plugs, from a possible cut, or burn from the exhaust manifold. Replace any damaged plugs. When I installed my new headers this was the case, I did a bad job routing and I burnt through #7 and had a dead cylinder because the spark would arc out. Ran like crap and shuddered very badly.

 

I appreciate the help man. I'll look at that stuff when I go home this weekend. As far as the cap and rotor though, I can't imagine that there would be any buildup on it seeing as this motor probably has less than 1000 miles on it. I replaced the spark plugs when I put the new heads on last summer. It's like each cylinder fires a few times in a row then randomly doesn't fire. I'll have to check and see if it is arcing to the headers as well, but I would think that it would do that every time it fired instead of just randomly (never seen this though so I could very easily be wrong).

 

When I said check your plugs for arcing, I actually meant the plug wires...sorry bout that. But yeah even when mine were burnt through on one cylinder, it would do it 90% of the time and then sometimes even out. Guess thats what was causing the shuddering, the engine going from good to bad and fluctuating.

 

It's cool I figured that's what you meant. I'll go check that tonight and see if I can see anything to report back.

 

Well there is no arcing from the plug wires to anywhere. Could I just be getting a bad connection on EVERY wire? Another thing is that it will not idle below 1000 rpms until it has warmed up.

 

anybody?

 

Why don't you go ahead and see what your timing is up to. Other than that, I'm out of ideas.