legacycentral bbs

Any ideas on a simple way to check if all four cylinders are running? It just sounds like one is not, and by putting my hand over the exhaust, I'd guess that one's not. Without the speedometer cable working, just how rough should an engine run?

Rough how? When all cylinders are firing? Mine is so smooth you can barely tell it's running when you look at it. You can hear it, though.

Steve

Rough like this. Not sporadic, but like...
Well, I recorded it. The first part was recorded under the hood, but it didn't tell much. The second part was from under the car. It has a regular hollow sound to it.

http://comp.uark.edu/~tmillic/wave1.mp3
(192kbit, 48kHz, 1015kb)

pull your spark plug, and do compression tests

Thanks, but they're all consistently just under 165psi. In a way, I'm happier about that.

The recording sounds kinda normal to me....

I think if a cylinder were to stop firing, it would be much worse than that.

How old are your spark plug wires and spark plugs? And what brand are the spark plugs? Have you reset the ECU?

Andrew

If you get a scrap spark plug wire and connect one tower of the coil pack to ground, that should effectively take that cylinder out of the ignition cycle. If you do that and the engine doesn't run any rougher, that would be an indication that that cylinder isn't firing.

Note that you can't just disconnect a spark plug wire like some people suggest doing on distributor-equipped cars. With our waste spark ignition systems, each spark plug is actually involved in two cylinders' sparks.

Wow, Thanks for the input.
The spark plugs and cables are new. I believe the plugs are Bosch. I normally get NGK for my motorbike, so I wanted some for the wagon, but the weren't available at the time. The battery cable is disconnected now to clear the ECU. The only code it was flashing before is 33.
Hmmm. I'll have to find something to use in place of an old spark plug wire - I just don't keep those when I replace them.
I'll let you know what turns out with that test.

grounding the coil pack for any of the four plugs made it noticably rougher. I guess it just runs rough for some other reason. By the way, for the ECU, are the connectors supposed to be left connected?

Order some NGK's and get the Bosch's out. Nobody has had good experiences with the Bosch plugs in our cars.