Hey everyone, I have a 88 N/A, mostly stock except for RB header and straight pipe exhaust, and I've owned the car for about 5 years and this is the first time I've had this problem. On Friday I drove my car to take my son to a concert, put a total of about 200 miles on the car, it did great the whole time. When I get back into our town, I felt what seemed to be a misfire sitting at idle. When I accelerated and got up to speed, it definitely didn't have proper power, but it wasn't a dead skip(I've blown the rear rotor out on this car before, so it's not that bad). Since this is the first misfire I've had on my car I checked it like any other misfire, I started pulling the plug wires off at the ignition coils, starting with the leading coils, and they both caused the car to run much rougher. When I pulled the trailing wires off, the car stayed the same, rpm's didn't drop and the car didn't skip any worse.
I guess, my question is... would this be normal? or am I headed in the right direction. I had spark out of both of the trailing coil terminals, but it didn't affect the running of the vehicle. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!!!

 

Check the easy things first like the TPS. Green/Red wire should be 1 volt w/key to on and the engine as warm as it can get. The car should also run rather fine on just the leading coil but run rather rough on just the trailing which seems to be what you have.

 

I know the TPS is ok, and the leading coil is ok as well. It seems like it is just running rough at idle and under load. My big question is should the trailing plug wires being removed cause the engine to run rougher? If that is the case, both the front and rear trailing coils aren't changing the problem.

 

Just another thing I checked, I swapped my coils, and everything is still the same. This is my daily, just need a direction to go in.

I guess my big question is, should the trailing coils affect idle misfires? If I take the trailing plug wire off, should it misfire worse or stay the same???

 

As stated above, trailing ignition doesn't do much for the car performance-wise. Should run pretty much the same with or without it.

Suggested steps:
1. Poor man compression's check so you aren't chasing your tail.
2. Look for plug wire arc'ing with the car running somewhere dark.
3. Look for a vacuum leak.