1995 Max - Roaming coil pack mis-fire?

Hello, I have been experiencing very rough accelerating (like it's running out of gas?) for about a week now. The car has 148K miles and starts flawlessly and even runs pretty good at highway speeds with the cruise control on (not perfect though). But after about fifteen minutes the slightest acceleration will cause it to "miss" (like a loose electrical connection) and it's getting worse. The dealer said that one of the coil packs was mis-firing and replaced it. This only made the condition worse(?!) Now, the service manager says that "it could be that all of the coil packs have gone bad" because each time they replace a known bad coil pack with a good one another one is indicated as mis-firing by the ECM. Service manager says that "sometimes when one coil pack goes bad a chain reaction causes all of them to fail". $700.00 to repair. Youch! Is there ay way to test each individual coil pack out of the car? Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help ahead of time. Ted snipped-for-privacy@bellsouth.net

Reply to
Ted
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Make sure it's not something else like the fuel injectors. I'm not buying the "chain reaction" theory, and in my experience, coil pack failures do not just occur under certain driving circumstances (ie. "slight acceleration" but constant over a period of time. Also, are you getting a code for multiple misfires or just one bank. Try to trouble shoot by switching adjacent coil packs/spark plugs and seeing what bank the computer pops up with as misfiring. YOu can test coil packs with a multimeter but in my experience, an intermittent problem may test normal.

BTW, a set of coil packs can be had for well under $400 and they are very easy to install.

CW

Reply to
CW

Hi Ted

acceleration

Reply to
cobus
95 Maximas don't have distributor caps or distributors
Reply to
Roger

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