Engine problem first drive of the year [FIXED]

[Billy182]

Hi folks,
I’ve been away from the forum for quite a while, life generally getting in the way of things, but today I decided to take the wife for a drive in the xrunner to her favorite vineyard.
Believe it or not, this was the very first time I’ve driven it this year, other than a warm up around the block in the spring before its annual oil change.
The truck started up fine, and no issues during an easy warm up a few city blocks to the highway. Once we got on the highway, about a mile down the road I noticed a severe lean misfire. AFR was reading over 22, and CEL was flashing. I quickly backed off and got off the highway. I was able to limp it home with light throttle & minimal load.
Once we got home, I shut it off and took a look under the hood. I was hoping I might get lucky and find a vacuum hose off, or something else disconnected, but no luck, everything seemed ok at first glance.
…And here’s the weird part, I needed to move it over in the driveway, started it up, and everything ran fine, 100% back to normal and AFR @ 14.8.

I haven’t done any diagnosis yet, I wasn’t going to let it ruin our day so we hopped into the other truck and headed off.

This is one of the stranger problems I’ve come across, I’m thinking an intermittent electrical issue, but can’t rule out a fuel pump problem until I check running pressure. I guess I’ll start with checking code history, and move on from there.

If anyone has had a strange issue like this, I’m all ears. If not, I’ll keep everyone posted as I go through my step by step diagnosis.

At least is cleaned up nice…

 

[gearhead899]

My guess is a bad plug or maybe a coil. I recently had a similar thing happen and it was a bad plug eventho it was visually fine. Scan it and see what cylinder the missfire is on

 

[Billy182]

My guess is a bad plug or maybe a coil. I recently had a similar thing happen and it was a bad plug eventho it was visually fine. Scan it and see what cylinder the missfire is on

Thanks for your reply. I plan to start with a thorough visual inspection, followed by a scan to check history/live data, and then go from there. If nothing happens in the driveway I’ll go for a test drive with the analyzer hooked up and see if it re-occurs (I’m really hoping it does so I can get it fixed). Intermittent electrical issues can be a bear, but we’ll see.
I’ve never heard of a plug working, then not working, and then working again all within a short timeframe. Usually I’ve see them start to miss, or get fouled/die, and that’s it. Was your plug issue intermittent at all and cause a dead miss, and then work normally again?

 

[gearhead899]

Thanks for your reply. I plan to start with a thorough visual inspection, followed by a scan to check history/live data, and then go from there. If nothing happens in the driveway I’ll go for a test drive with the analyzer hooked up and see if it re-occurs (I’m really hoping it does so I can get it fixed). Intermittent electrical issues can be a bear, but we’ll see.
I’ve never heard of a plug working, then not working, and then working again all within a short timeframe. Usually I’ve see them start to miss, or get fouled/die, and that’s it. Was your plug issue intermittent at all and cause a dead miss, and then work normally again?

Yeah so my issue happened after the truck sat for a month or so. Took it out for a drive. Let it warm up for a while then started driving and it drove great. After a mile or 2 it started missing hard under load with the flashing CEL. Pushed the clutch in and revved it and it would rev smooth. Only did it under load. Limped it back home and the scan said cylinder 3 missfire. I pulled the plug and it looked fine. Tried throwing in a new coil on that cylinder and it still missed. Tried a new plug and all good. The plugs i installed with the supercharger about 8 years ago but only had about 15000 miles on them.

 

[Billy182]

Thanks for the info, I’ll be sure to keep an eye on that. At least now I’ll have a good reason to try out my new scanner. I bought this about a year ago and never had a good enough reason to use it until now

 

[gearhead899]

Thanks for the info, I’ll be sure to keep an eye on that. At least now I’ll have a good reason to try out my new scanner. I bought this about a year ago and never had a good enough reason to use it until nowView attachment 23834

Nice. Let me know what the code ends up being

 

[Billy182]

So today I had the chance to go over it a bit. Visual inspection appeared ok, nothing loose, and no obvious signs of any wires bitten through by a critter.
The analyzer showed a pending cylinder #1 misfire, all else clear.
I cleared the code, started it up and took a look at live data. Everything seemed fine.

I took it for a test drive, and about two miles down the road the misfire came back as P0301, so I knew for sure something was going on in cylinder 1. It had a dead miss even at idle, but cleared again after I shut it off and restarted.

I pulled the plug when I got home. A lot of carbon as can be seen. While I was in there I swapped coil #1 with coil #5, put things back together and went for another ride.

Just my luck though, it ran smoothly with no misfire.

I think I recall somewhere reading that colder plugs foul easier unless they get hot enough and I suppose that may have happened, but plugs are cheap so I ordered some. At least I’ll be able to rule that out if it happens again.

Here’s a pic of the plug, I’m running Denso IKH22’s

 

[gearhead899]

Yeah same plugs im running. Im willing to bet that after you swap the plugs, you wont have any more issues

 

[Billy182]

FYI to anyone with similar issue:
This was fixed with a simple change of plugs. I put about 130 miles on the truck today and it didn’t skip a beat, ran flawlessly and 100% up to 10psi boost.

A big thanks to @gearhead899 for posting up in reply.

To anyone who may find this as interesting as I did, the plug that failed had less than 8 thousand miles on it. In my 40 years of driving and wrenching, not once did I ever have a plug completely fail on me in a vehicle (not counting 2 stroke dirt bikes, etc).

This may simply be problem with colder plugs and short drives/fouling/etc.

Enjoy your rides everyone, it was a beautiful warm day in NJ today. The wife and I drove out to Hot Dog Johnny’s in Buttzville, and hit a local vineyard. The truck is put away now probably until next spring unless we get another warm day.
Tomorrow is a ride in the 427 convertible

 

[gearhead899]

FYI to anyone with similar issue:
This was fixed with a simple change of plugs. I put about 130 miles on the truck today and it didn’t skip a beat, ran flawlessly and 100% up to 10psi boost.

A big thanks to @gearhead899 for posting up in reply.

To anyone who may find this as interesting as I did, the plug that failed had less than 8 thousand miles on it. In my 40 years of driving and wrenching, not once did I ever have a plug completely fail on me in a vehicle (not counting 2 stroke dirt bikes, etc).

This may simply be problem with colder plugs and short drives/fouling/etc.

Enjoy your rides everyone, it was a beautiful warm day in NJ today. The wife and I drove out to Hot Dog Johnny’s in Buttzville, and hit a local vineyard. The truck is put away now probably until next spring unless we get another warm day.
Tomorrow is a ride in the 427 convertible
View attachment 23839

I knew it would be the plugs lol glad it was an easy fix. I also had my black truck out today in the nice weather. Im down by Cape May. If you are ever down south, hit me up!

 

[Click]

FYI to anyone with similar issue:
This was fixed with a simple change of plugs. I put about 130 miles on the truck today and it didn’t skip a beat, ran flawlessly and 100% up to 10psi boost.

A big thanks to @gearhead899 for posting up in reply.

To anyone who may find this as interesting as I did, the plug that failed had less than 8 thousand miles on it. In my 40 years of driving and wrenching, not once did I ever have a plug completely fail on me in a vehicle (not counting 2 stroke dirt bikes, etc).

This may simply be problem with colder plugs and short drives/fouling/etc.

Enjoy your rides everyone, it was a beautiful warm day in NJ today. The wife and I drove out to Hot Dog Johnny’s in Buttzville, and hit a local vineyard. The truck is put away now probably until next spring unless we get another warm day.
Tomorrow is a ride in the 427 convertible
View attachment 23839

He said Buttz, heh heh heh heh