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Misfire all of a sudden - It's like a tractor

C

CTR_Paul

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5,642
Evening chaps, I've got a pretty serious issue with the old Civic (Ep3 for those who don't know).

Accelerated up the motorway slip road tonight and settled into a nice 70 cruise, noticed the car felt a bit juddery which was odd. On arrival back at home it appears to be misfiring. Sounds like it's only running on 3 cyls. Never had any issues with it before, but I guess it's got 72k on the clock now.

The engine sounds ok (nothing sounds awful in there) but it's just missing. I'm thinking plugs ?

Checked the DTC's with KPro and it's not reporting anything, which I guess is a good sign? ! Although i'd have thought something like this would have certainly triggered a fault code.

Any ideas ladies and gents? I'm very worried at the prospect of a big bill !
 
Bad fuel maybe?

Try disconnecting the battery to reset the ECU to see if that has any affect.
 
A friend once had a similar issue, turned out to be the "hook" at the end of the spark pulg had broken off.
 
Fairly sure its not fuel, its had a good 60% of the same fill so I'm thinking plugs or something along those lines. Will get it to a garage tomorrow hopefully it'll be an easy cheap fix, although I doubt it somehow.
Thanks for the replies folks.
 
could be a number of things, check the plugs first condition? then unbolt the coil packs with the engine running start with number 1 cylinder nearest the drive belt end, pull the coil pack up to break the contact to the spark plug, if the engine runs worse that cylinder is ok if it doesn't then thats the cylinder with the problem. Then you need to eliminate the following by swapping it to the adjacent cylinder: spark plug and coil, injector and even the ecu. my mates dc5 had the same symptoms, had a look at it for him number 1 cylinder injector had gone down and blew the injector controller inside the ecu!
 
I would go with plugs ~ coilpack.

Also worth wiping the leads down if you're/they're inspecting the plugs.
 
Hmm MIL came on when the breakdown guy was here, detected misfires on several cylinders. It's at the garage now getting checked over. I'm praying it's not too expensive to fix and it's not something like a bent valve.
 
Garage reckons it's coil-pack failure. The signal to the coil-pack is fine, but the signal out of the coil pack isn't as it's only doing 3 out of 4 signals, hence rough running. My plugs are a bit knackered too apparently, so they're getting replaced.

Fingers crossed all of this sorts it out....
 
I'm holding off celebrating until I have it back and it's working fine again. It's booked in for an MOT and new front brakes tomorrow so this is turning into an expensive week, just what was ordered for a public sector bod who has just seen he's having a nice 2yr pay freeze ! DOH!
 
don't worry paul as i said above i think it is likely to be coil pack and or plugs. plugs are dirt cheap, no idea on a coil pack but they can't be more than £40 each surely and its probably only one. should be well under £100.

i've had a pay freeze for the last two years, don't worry about it.
 
100% not fixed. It's better when it's warm, but it's crap on idle.

All coilpacks replaced and all plugs.

Hoping to take it across to TDI north today, the good folks there know their stuff about K20 engines and will be able to tell me if it is a timing chain issue, bent valve or whatever else it could be. Crap.
 
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