2003 - 102,800 miles, Plugs, wire's, fuel filter all replaced in May 2008 at about 88k. Has a KN air filter.

After the storm here in NY I drove my car for first time since Friday. Half way into my drive to work the Check Engine Light came on and started to flash. Seemed like the car was running a little rough. Of what I understand it's a misfire if the light flashes. Before the light came on, for last month it seemed like the car ran a little rough at low idle. Also when i got my inspection the car came back w/ a CEL. The (A-holes) who did inspection drove the car, beat the sh*t out of it since they burned a 1/4 tank of gas. The CEL for that was 02 sensor. I used contact cleaner and go the light off immediatly this was in june. The light never flashed then.

My question is what could this possible be, since as stated above all those things where recently replaced. I am going to get teh code pulled today. I hope it's something easy this has been a great car to me.

 

A flashing CEL is usually a very bad sign. Just post up the code/s that you get and they're usually fairly easy to figure out. Ignore what the guy doing the scanning says, he's probably wrong.

 

ooo I know, the guy at advanced auto parts on my GF's 03 Corolla, code showed lean he said I needed to replace the airfilter, the downstream 02 was bad. I will post codes later today. I probably won't be bale to get them until 6pm.

 

Yeah, its very bad when it starts flashing...

Like Ryan said, get the codes.

The ONLY times that I have ever had the CEL flash on me was when I blew the head gasket in my 95, in my wifes 96 and when I was having issues with Fel-Pro lower intake gaskets on the 00' and it was leaking coolant into the intake.

From my experiance, all things flashing lead to a blown gasket. σ_σ

 

flashing CEL is usually the sign of a misfire or something that resembles a misfire to the PCM. Definitly have it scanned for codes.

 

I got the codes pulled at advanced auto parts. It came back as "Cylinder 2 misfire" On the way home from work 16 miles and to AAP 4 miles each way the light never flashed. I was thinking of changing that plug see if that solves the problem. Any sugestions?

 

Check the cylinder 2 plug and see if its fouled. If not, make sure the gap is correct. If it is, get an ignition tester and see if that spark plug is getting spark by plugging the tester into the spark plug wire boot and clamping the tester to the engine block somewhere (to ground it) and then start the car. If its not getting spark, then see if its the wire or the coil by plugging the spark plug tester directly into the coil pack where the spark plug wire plugs in, and ground the tester with a jumper cable to the negative battery terminal, start the car and see if it gets spark. If it does, then its a bad spark plug wire, if it doesn't then its a bad coil pack. If it is getting spark at the spark plug wire, then see if the cylinder is getting fuel by swapping the cylinder 2 fuel injector with one of the other fuel injectors (e.g. cyl 5) and clear the codes and drive it for a while. If the CEL moves with the fuel injector (e.g. cal 5), then you have a faulty fuel injector. Once you've done all that… post back and tell us the results and we'll recommend where to go next. Good luck…

btw, make sure the ignition tester you get, from wherever you get it, is setup for high energy ignitions (HEI).

 

For the ignition tester will this do LINK BELOW. (dumb question will this device test both if the spark plug is getting spark and the the coil pack.) Thanks for the instructions, for novice like me they seem easy to follow. I am going to do this tonight.

http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/web...CGRP2020A____#

 

Misfire codes are typically Spark related. A fuel injector not spraying right (or plugged) would normally cause a cylinder to lean out and cause a relevant code to be thrown like P0171. Also if you run a code scanner with Live Data Capability (PID is the technical Acronym), The fuel trim for that side of the engine will be way off.

Guno89, what was the EXACT code that the autoparts store pulled? Sometimes the code will spell out which coil.

 

Unfourtanitly I didn't see the code # on the reader. It said "cylindar 2 misfire" ( I will go back tonight) it defintly didn't say enigne was running lean. I have my doubts it's a plug or wire since they are so new. A frined of mine whose parents have a used car lot told me he has replaced coil packs on about 10 fords over the years windstars/ towncars etc and that said every time he got that message it was the coil. I am going to test tonight to see the issue. I am going to go to auto store after work so wil lhave htme pull the codes again fo rme.

Thanks for all the help so far. Knock on wood this is only my 2nd repair in this car besides replacing the cooling fan.