Engine Misfire

[codex57]

I think my g/f's Camry is misfiring. How can I tell? Basically, at idle the engine kinda flutters and there's no acceleration. It seems to be ok once I hit 2nd gear, but she says if you go much faster, the check engine light turns on. I called her brother (a head Toyota mechanic) and he suspects it's an engine misfire from our description so that's what I'm going with.

This happen to any of your cars and how much was it to fix?

 

[wileycoyote]

Check the spark plugs, could be the problem and it's really easy. You could also check the air filter, and change the pcv valve (or is it pvc, anyway a $5 part that can cause reduced fuel mileage and rough idle). A dose of good quality injector cleaner probably wouldn't hurt. I had a Toyota Tercel in college that the mount for the distributor broke on, so the timing was always off. It would have been couple hundred bucks to fix, but that would have cut into my beer budget, so I jammed a couple washers in to mostly hold it in place... It ran. If her car has a distributor, you might pop it open and look at the rotor and the cap. For about $50 you could probably replace the rotor, cap, wires, and plugs.

 

[codex57]

turns out it was a bad ignition coil. What the hell is that? Least it's only $160. Lot less than I thought. More than a bad spark plug but the car acted so rough sometimes, I thought it was much worse.

 

[frolf]

YEP, i have one misfiring cylinder for sure, maybe two, and i'm almost positive its the ignition coils.