ignition help needed please!!

heres the story hopefully you guys can shed some light on my problem.

a couple of days ago my car was shaking real bad if i hit the gas anymore that just a hair and i would have no acceleration so i took it to autozone and they read the codes and the one that came up was cylinder #2 missfire. so in the last two days my buddy and i changed all the plugs and wires. to try to make a long story short the car is doing the same thing after the tune up so i went back to auto zone to get the codes read again and now its comming up as multiple cylinder misfire i know that one of the coil packs work cause my buddy took off one of the plug boots off the coil pack while the car was running and got a nice little shock. my assumption is that the ignition module is bad, does sound about right for the diagnosis and generally how many miles on my 3.8 motor do those last for? i am currently at 130k

thanks,
tristan

[Lucky SOB]

dumb question but it's always easiest to check the obvious things first... are you sure you have the right wires going to the right cylinders?

[triskit527]

yea the wires are put on correctly, as long as you do one cylinder at a time you cant mess that up lol

[Lucky SOB]

exactly! ummm.... you didn't accidentley loosen your distributer and adjust the timing correct? did you have it timed by chance? if not you may want to try that.

[triskit527]

no i didnt loosen the distributor, and no i didnt have it timed, how would i go about doing that? is that something that i could even do?

[MP81]

Ignition module can **** things up. Check the rotor too.

Wait, does this car have a distributor?

[triskit527]

i dont believe it has a distributor, just ignition module and coil packs, i could be wrong i just have not seen one under the hood. check the rotor? what is that?

[sman]

Also, just because the coil gave you a zap, doesn't mean its producing as much as it should be.

[sman]

i dont believe it has a distributor, just ignition module and coil packs, i could be wrong i just have not seen one under the hood. check the rotor? what is that?

Rotor is a part of a distributor, the are a couple main parts the rotor, that turns inside of the cap, that all of the plug wires go to.

[MP81]

If your car has coil packs, it doesn't have a distributor, thus no rotor.
Ignition module could be doing it.

[97rs4life]

Ignition module can **** things up. Check the rotor too.

Wait, does this car have a distributor?

not on these fourth gens.


There are some different things that can cause a misfire. Double check your wires to make sure none of them are arching. Coil packs can go bad and cause this also, switch the coil packs around and see if the misfire moves around. Another thing is a clogged cat can cause a random misfire as well. Do you have the stock cat on yet at 130k?

[triskit527]

the cat is not stock i replaced it with a catco hiflow one around 4k ago, if i switch the coil packs around the car will still shake wont wont it so wouldnt it be hard to decipher which coil pack is bad, all the boots are on snug i double checked them today and also added dielectrical grease in the boots. is there any way of testing the coil packs with a multi meeter?

[MP81]

No, what you outta do, is just unplug one at a time, until you get to one that doesn't change how the car is running as much or at all - that's your bad one.

[triskit527]

well when my buddy unplugged one of the boots from the coil pack it didnt change how the car ran but there was still a good inch or so arch between the coil pack and the plug wire. wouldnt it be the one that doesnt have an electrical arch if i hold the boot above the coil pack be that bad one? there is no other way to test the ignition module or coil pack though? and if the car is getting a code for multiple cylinder misfire would that be a sign of a bad ignition module?

[sman]

It would make sense that the one not arching would be the bad one, but stranger things have happened I suppose, ignition is not my forte. Ill let someone else chime in.