Plugs and Wires - Postmortem Troubleshooting

[Kyngfish]

Hi all, I've recently been getting a highway shimmy or stutter at low throttle input, and after reading some posts on here, I figured I'd start with the plugs and wires.

Job went pretty seemlessly, and car seems to be running more smoothly, and hard to describe, but at lower throttle input it fees a little smoother and stronger. So far no shimmy, but it was happening very occasionally so let's see if it solves the problem. Here are a few post-mortem questions.

• My clock wasn't working before changing the plugs and wires, it would sometimes go dim. Now it's running perfectly. Is there anything in the engine bay I could have jostled so I can check to see if it can permanently fix the problem? Weird result.
• Car ran fine all day yesterday, but I got some evap codes this morning when I started up. I jiggled some of the hoses I had moved during the change, cleared the codes and nothing so far, but any kind of heads up on what to check would be cool. Codes are P0441, P0446 - I mostly moved things around on the passenger's side, but those codes seem related to the charcoal canister, which is driver's side. Any ideas?
• Is it worth also changing the coils? things seem to be running fine, but maybe as preventative maintenance?

 

[gamefreakgc]

Hi all, I've recently been getting a highway shimmy or stutter at low throttle input, and after reading some posts on here, I figured I'd start with the plugs and wires.

Job went pretty seemlessly, and car seems to be running more smoothly, and hard to describe, but at lower throttle input it fees a little smoother and stronger. So far no shimmy, but it was happening very occasionally so let's see if it solves the problem. Here are a few post-mortem questions.

• My clock wasn't working before changing the plugs and wires, it would sometimes go dim. Now it's running perfectly. Is there anything in the engine bay I could have jostled so I can check to see if it can permanently fix the problem? Weird result.
• Car ran fine all day yesterday, but I got some evap codes this morning when I started up. I jiggled some of the hoses I had moved during the change, cleared the codes and nothing so far, but any kind of heads up on what to check would be cool. Codes are P0441, P0446 - I mostly moved things around on the passenger's side, but those codes seem related to the charcoal canister, which is driver's side. Any ideas?
• Is it worth also changing the coils? things seem to be running fine, but maybe as preventative maintenance?

1. Those are unrelated. Clock failure or intermittent failure is common, you can check Ebay or junkyards for a new clock when you clock does bite the dust. The issue is in the clock circuitry itself.

2. Check the hoses to make sure none of them cracked or popped off by mistake. There's a lot of vacuum hoses on the driver's side, so take your time and make sure they are all good. Also, don't overfill your gas tank, this can also cause EVAP codes due to gas getting into vacuum hoses.

3. No, coil packs are not part of preventative maintenance. However, the coil boots should be replaced along with spark plug wires, so if you haven't done that yet it's a simple and fairly cheap job. The coil boots pop off the bottom of the coil packs themselves.

It's not a bad idea to run a fuel injector bottle or two through your tank on the next fill-up. They can also help restore injector functionality in case that's causing the stutter.

 

[Kyngfish]

The issue is in the clock circuitry itself

Thanks for all the insight. The clock has been working intermittently for a while, but the lights behind the HVAC controls are also not turning on, so I wonder if it's just a loose connection. I had planned to take apart the dash when I had time, but for whatever reason, after months, after messing around in the engine bay, the clock light is strong and everything looks good.

Weird!

 

[19963.4lsr5]

Don't try and tie randomly occurring events into 1 common problem. That's how conspiracy theorists are born.


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