OK about a week ago I was racing and my car jerked at high rpms like at 100mph and would take a long time to accelerate further than 100mph.

Well I looked at the spark plugs and I discovered that my plubs were all leading ones and I replaced them with new ones that I found in my GXL parts car and it helped a lil bit but today a lot of **** happened like my batt terminal was loose and a coolant hose was leaking and my idle was jumping from 1k-1.5k rpm so I fix the batt and hose and the car starts now and I check the plugs as I usually do when I have a chance. This time I trace the plug wires from the coil thingies to the plugs and I notice that the wires are as follows:

Leading 1 goes to the plug at the bottom of the rotor that is towards the rear of the car
Leading 2 goes to the bottom plug of the front rotor

Then I checked the trailing wires
Trailing 1 goes to the plug at the top of the front rotor
Trailing 2 goes to the plug at the top of the rear rotor

My question is where are they suppossed to go annd could this have caused the jerkyness at speed I replaced the wires in the order in which they were because I changed one plug at a time and I had never touched the plugs before since they had just put new ones in when I bought the car.

 

L1 is for the bottom forward plug
L2 is for the bottom rear plug

Same for Trailing except they go on the top.

Jarrett

 

ok I put them on the way they are supossed to be on like you said and I got a hell of a lot of detonation when trying to accelerate.WTF?

 

Are you sure it was detonation? Are you sure you have the plugs on right from the coil packs as in you know which coil on the coil pack is L1 and L2? -Gabe

 

The coil packs have L1 L2 and T1 T2 on them.

 

Changed your plugs lately?

Jarrett

 

yup two or three days ago all the other ones were leading plugs and no trailing

 

So what do you mean by detonation? If you are detonating badly, your engine should be toast by now....Sure it isnt a misfire?

 

it sounded like there was steel pellets flying around in the engine

 

why do you guys use different plugs for leading and trailing?

I would suggest try changing your leads but if your car is lumpy on tick over I think may well have cracked a tip especially as you had you leads on wrong

 

That is the way it was designed the plugs fire differently. I doubt one of my plugs broke.

 

You said you put in plugs out of your parts car, right? Why not put in NEW plugs?
You followed the wires bac to the couls, right? My wires are labled and I could imagine somebody both puting the wires on whichever coil they wanted (disregarding the lables) and then trying to put them on the right plug by reading the lables...not saying that that's YOU but it's possible..
Checked your timing?
Got spark?

 

Just to make it easy on everyone.
Front coil(leading) goes to bottom plugs. Doesn't mater which.
Rear coil(trailing) goes to top plugs. T1 top front T2 top rear.
Hope this helps.

 

Do you have a timing light?

I would start by verifying you have spark on all 4 wires, then I would check timing.

Then I would start really digging.

Do those checks and get back to me.

Jarrett

 

the plugs from the GXL were brand new because the guy that sold it to me tried everything to get it running again so it had everything brand new the friggin plugs did not have a bit of carbon as oppossed to mine which were really dirty.

Also I went to drive it and it started up fine but when I picked up myg/f at her work she had trouble starting up and did it again at the wl-mart parking lot and she would keep trying to stal;l on me. and she is now running kinda warm the temp needle is at the 2/3 mark and rises if I go above 75mph.

I do not have a timming light but I will go buy one at auto zone soon since I now have $$$. How do I verify that I have spark on all wires. I usually did not mess with that but I am willing to learn for my rex.