I'm a new owner of a 90 FC. I've got the running good but I still had a check engine light on. So last night I tried to start the beast, Nothing just turn over. I then had my wife try to start it so I could hear the the fuel pump, it was working. The next thing I tried was to see If I was getting spark, with a old spark plug I stuck it in the boot and had her try it again, I was getting spark on the leading side but not on the trailing side. So I thought I might need a new coil but after inspecting the coil area I noticed a small plug that was not plugged in come to find out that the coil was never plugged in. Plugged it in and it fired right up W NO CHECK ENGINE LIGHT!! It smoked for a good 10 mins.
So to make a long story longed my question is why/how did the car still run with two of the plugs not working? And why the smoke and little pieces of burning something coming out of the exhaust?

 

A RX will start and run with no Trail coil working at all. And you won't even notice that lack of Trail action.

It's a KNOWN that the tach will not work if the Trail coils are not working. So that brings up the question, why in your thread did you not mention the Tach has not been working.

 

The car will run leadings only with only a slight reduction in power and mileage, and a slight increase in emissions.

More interestingly, your tach should have been dead with no trailing coils.

The smoke is probably because it was flooded.

 

what if only the trailings are firing?

 

The tach did work and always worked.

What about the check engine light? When I pulled codes about 2 weeks ago I got., 51 that is the fuel pump resister relay error code. It had no other codes. could anybody shed light on this? thanks

 

The engine will run as if the timing was retarded. No power, hard to start, glowing manifold.

On a side note, I posted 1 second after HAILERS.

 

Better late than never!