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Driving on 7 Cylinders

743 views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  JBert 
#1 ·
About a month ago I was driving and had an obvious misfire for about 30 seconds. I was able to pull off the main road and plug in my bluetooth OBDII scanner and it said I had a cylinder 7 misfire. The misfire soon got better and I drove home fine.

For the next month I had a slight hesitation or stumbling while slowly accelerating with low RPMs, even stalling a few times on slow uphill accelerations. Higher RPMs, harder acceleration, and idling all felt normal.

I was checking everything, but couldn't find the issue. I had replaced the spark plugs only a few months ago with new Motorcraft ones so I assumed they would be fine. Since I had checked many other things already, today I decided to check the plugs. Sure enough, when I got to the cylinder 7 plug, the top strap was missing so it wouldn't have been able to make a spark. I replaced the plug and the car runs great again!

Since the issue is fixed I wanted to share this in case it can help someone else. What surprised me was how little a difference having one less cylinder made and I was not getting any codes or check engine light. While the hesitation was noticeable, but still slight on the slow accelerations, it didn't seem to affect the majority of my driving. Has anyone else experienced something like this?
 
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#2 ·
I experienced it in a 2003 Crown Victoria. I was on freeway 99 in Fresno, and going under the freeway 41 interchange and came on a bunch of 2x4 boards scattered across all lanes. About 50 miles after running over some of the boards the car started to run rough. A 1/2 hour later I had the check engine light on. I got to the Ford dealer in Bakersfield and they found a defective coil on plug. They replaced the coil and the plug under warranty, and I was back on the road on my trip to Corsicana, Tx.
 
#3 ·
only thing close to that with me was when I got some bad gas. Normally I only get clear or non-ethanol gas for my 06 mustang gt, but the station I pulled into that I thought had clear gas but it was for fleet vehicles only. I had to go to the next closest station and it was a shell. I put just enough to get to the next Chevron with 1/4 tank and soon after leaving the engine started knocking, got a check engine light, and a code for misfire. After a run on a full tank of premium and some seafoam, knocking stopped when I got down to 3/4 of a tank.
 
#4 ·
JKrew, thanks for posting. No I have not experienced anything like that, and I am also surprised that there were no codes thrown.

I guess I am not too surprised that it made so little difference; when we are loafing around, we are probably only using the power of 4 cylinders anyway.
 
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