Ok, so I was messing with my plug wires earlier tonight. After I was done my car started idling like crap, giving it throttle it's fine, but it will die at idle if I have any accessories on, or it will barely idle with everything turned off. It's a really lopey idle that sounds like it could die any second.

Anyway I started pulling plug wires from each plug to try and check and I couldn't really pinpoint, but I pulled the wire from the number 1 plug, and I was holding the wire up around the boot if not higher, and it was zapping me. It could be because I was leaning against the car? I could also see like electricity jumping from the wire to a nearby vacuum hose it seemed like. Now I know you can get shocked, but should electricity be able to jump up and out of the wire up above the boot? I'm using the blue NGK wires too. Maybe something happened. I guess I'll have to go get a new set. I might still have a relatively new set of Bosch wires hanging around I can use in the meantime. Oh yeah the car did seem to sound slightly better upon pulling the number 1 wire.

 

yea it is possible to. if ur kV is high enough it could jump. My wires were the same and i changed them prob better.
(wire prob. not full drivability problem) i was also using ngk wires. check ur coil to make sure it doesnt have low resis some how and also make sure the lil capacitor is attached to absorb the voltage spikes.

 

It's more then that. My #6 fouls out all the time. she runs fine on 1-5. idles rougher. but runs fine. so loseing one cylinder woun't cause that much. check the plugs to make sure there not fouled. also. Vacume leaks. a small one won't hurt to bad. but the bigg ones will. Coil, Dizzy(buttin or cap maby) vacume leaks.

 

so duo did the car run fine befroe you messed wiith the wires??? if so id think they are in the wrong order. and yes you can get zapped.

 

I love a good jolt every now and then...

Spark plug wires can get (through wear) small cracks or holes in the insulation which can allow for the arc to jump through it.

 

Car ran fine save for the occasional miss while idling. I went out and because I read what Tony D had mentioned where you can pull plug wires and then start to car to pinpoint rod knock vs. lifter tick I pulled the 1 and 5 wires from plugs, then I thought well I'd be better off pulling them from the cap so spark wouldn't be jumping out the ends of the boots. I popped the wires back on the plugs and removed them from the cap, started the car up. Still got the ticking. Turned it off, reconnected the 1 and 5 plug wires and since then the car won't idle properly, but runs fine. I'll have to go out and look over for vacuum leaks, probably pull the plugs too. I wonder if I could have fouled out the plugs from starting up the car in the real cold weather without spark to those cylinders? I thought possibly I switched the plug wires, but I looked those over a bunch of times and noticed no problems.

 

I pulled my plugs they looked kinda black. I cleaned them all off, in a bit I'll go take the car for a drive. For the most part it ran good, although I always though under full boost with about 9 psi my car felt kinda lame, but maybe it's just me. At idle like I said there was a miss every so often, but once in a while I'd get like a really noticeable backfire.


Alright I think my car is possessed. Like I said I cleaned my plugs, rechecked my plug wire order which was fine. Made sure the plug wires were all were making good connections. I went for a drive. Car started up fine like normal, and then I get a little way up the street, probably about when the air regulator would be closing I'm sitting there idling and it starts doing the really lopey idle, I take it out of Drive and put it in Neutral and give it some throttle to keep the revs up to keep it from dieing. Take it for a drive down the freeway and back to make sure the car gets fully warmed up. Get off the freeway turn around get back on, make my way back off. I'm at a stop waiting for the light, now the car is idling fine again in drive with the lights on, heater going, etc. I did get the misfire/backfire, whatever it is, like normal that is noticeable and shakes the car. Anyway I don't know. The only other thing I could think of is when I was messing with the plug wires a big bunch of snow fell onto my wiring over near the coil where I have the mallory connected to the old wires and what not. I don't have them in split tubing wrapped up because I never found large enough tubing. So I was thinking maybe there was moisture in there causing issues? I really don't know. I ordered a new set of plug wires anyway, because that just didn't seem right for electricity to be jumping up off the wire up above the boot. So maybe it's a vacuum leak, maybe it's an ignition problem, I really don't know. Maybe it's the hydraulic lifters being stupid?

 

smoke test it..i did and i had almost every one of fuel injector o rings leaking out. real bad. new orings idle improved very well. misfire still there but timing needs to be set a little

 

they shouldnt zap you even if your leaning over the car, i say its time for new wires, and plugs while your at it (might as well).

i was always told that the more that leaks out the more resistance there is in the wire and the less zap maked it to the spark plug. it makes sence to me.

if it was a little zap then its not very bad but its only getting worse. my maxima how ever were HORRIBLE. it would zap you so hard it would cause muscle spasms. one time it it hit me so hard and so many times i hit the under side of the hood so hard, i couldnt control my arm but i also yanked the wire off the rotor so i wasnt stuck there.

 

well mind you I was holding the plug wire while it was disconnected from the plug. It was still connected to the the distributor though, but you would think just like a regular electrical wire holding it up around the top of the boot or above that shouldn't be conductive as it's supposed to be very well insulated. Like I said the wire portion above the boot I could visibly see the electricity jumping off the wire to a nearby vacuum line, probably because the vacuum line itself comes in contact with metal or something conductive. I'm going to definitely replace them as I've already ordered a new set of wires. I think it's odd though that my NGK wires are barely old and they could have issues. Although shortly after I got them my radiator sprung a leak and did manage to hit a few of the wires with hot antifreeze. Maybe I should go magnecore? Although I hear they suck when it comes to setting timing as the inductive pickup won't work through their insulation.

It wouldn't be the first time I've bought something new to find out it actually had problems...

 

pull off your cap, check the dizzy shaft, and cap/ rotor. make sure there is no traces of carbon tracking beween the contacts in the cap. they can cause missfire. the crbon tracking will look like someone took a pencil and drew a line between some points. you can also mimick this with a real pencil, kinda fun to do it to unsuspecting friends!!

 

actually that's good advice. Thanks Shady I'll have to go give that a check.

 

well a few days of no issues then the problem struck again. I wonder if it's related to the cold.

 

check the dizzy shaft as well, mine did something simmilar when it was worn

 

How do I check the shaft itself? Pull the whole thing out? It seems quite possible. Now the only difference is that my car has the Crank Angle Sensor, so I don't know if the shaft itself matters? I'll have to go out, I've just been reluctant to with how cold it is lately.

I think I'm going to go out there and start spraying brakleen again as well and see if I do have a vacuum leak.

 

Well I was ohming out my plug wires. They all varied in reading. 2 of the wires were the same or very close readings, 2 others were the same but different from the other 2, and the coil wire was a way different reading than all of the others. I changed out my wires, so I'll see if that helps any. Pulled the distributor cap and I couldn't notice any traces of carbon tracking, but I tried to wipe it all out to be safe. My contacts on the cap and the tip of the rotor looked a bit burned, but not too bad. The little button inside the cap that pushes against the rotor looked good.

 

ah good, to check the dizzy shaft, just grab it and wiggle side to side. mine moved so much it was hitting everything and not lining up the contact points. it ate everything in there. had to buy a new one. 234 dollars later it was all good. some wires have diff. resistance due to length, thats why they may have lined up in pairs. if you have msd, or accel (or other upgraded ignition stuff) you need to get 8mm or 9mm wires to carry the power. moroso and accel, and msd make good wires.

 

I grabbed the rotor and was trying to wiggle that and it wasn't really moving anywhere. I haven't tried running the car yet so we'll see.

For example with the ohming my coil wire I set the multimeter to 20k ohms and got a reading of 4.07, I don't know how you interpret that.

 

set it lower then that. and you never want a reading of more then .5 but that reading i think should be .4. i'm not to good with all the ranges of a muilti meter.

 

with ohms as long as your not maxing the scale its fine. the lower you go the more decimal places you get. making it more accurate.

 

".0-.5Ohms is coninuity. .5-what ever is still coninuity, but not good enough, Rewire it." SFC York, US Army. I try to stay with training. the less the better.