Ok, I got a off the wall question for all you tech heads. I have a 98 ford windstar with a 3.8 (wife's car). It has a miss that comes and goes. I had it scanned and it was a miss fire on no.1 cylinder. That tells me that it is one of 3 problems plugs, wires or coil pack. I changed the plugs and that didn't fix it. Wires look good. Do you think its thte coil pack? I dont wanna spend allot of cash on it (its a damn van lol). so do you think its the coil pack or wires? I think its the coil pack because its a off and on miss. What do you all think?

 

TGC?

 

whats TGC?

 

I believe he means third gen content.

To make it useful, even the DIS used on, say, a TTA (and I believe some of the later 3.1 V6's?) can be easily tested. The coil pack itself has a range of resistance for the primary and secondary wiring that you can check with a cheap volt/ohm meter. While you are doing that, CHECK the resistance in the wire rather than just saying it "looks good". You never know. You will have to look up the values yourself, but should be easy enough to find. I readily found them for a 4.6 Thunderchicken in a few minutes, should be the same search and find for a 3.8 Windblow. You can try a few other things like swapping the plug wire with another if there are two of relatively same length, and check for leaks and the like. The 4.sux I was working on had a cracked intake (common on those) that leaked coolant into the quasi-sealed spark plug boot hole and was causing the same type of intermittent miss. I dont remember where the wires are on a 3.8, have yet to change anything on mine but water or a wire shorting to metal (like a SBC will do on the exhaust heat shields and exhaust pipe crossover) will cause all kinds of weird intermittent issues.

 

yep

 

that makes sense the water getting in there and shorting it out. The only reason I posted it here is this is the only web site that I am on. I got all the stats on testing the coil pack its just not that easy to get out (its a van and its in the back). I will test the coil and the wires. I was just trying to see if anyone else has had this problem with a windstar. There are allot of them out there and allot of people like me have more then one or two cars. This one just happens to be the one that my wife drives and I am getting tired of listening to her tell me to fix it and I don't want to lol. But I guess the trans am comes out this week end to make room to fix this stupid van.

 

Run it in the dark place and look for arcing under the hood.

Plug wires can ohm out perfect but still have a break in insulation going to ground.

TTA coilpacks should OHM out at 11-13k post to post. A Ford - ???

 

You did read the rules when you signed up, right?