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Stuttering Under Load

SrsBsns

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San Diego
#1
2015, 78K. 2J Intake, NGK -1's, Stratified 91 tune.

Car has been fantastic with no issues. A few days ago, I was driving up the 5 to LA when I got stuck behind a slow car. Dropped a gear to 5th and accelerated to pass and under throttle the car stuttered. I immediately backed off. AP showed that timing was pulled from cylinder 3 but nothing from 4 (the two that I monitor). I wasn't accelerating very hard but I don't remember boost psi or engine rpm. I was not WOT, probably ~50% and probably around 3K rpm. After letting off, the car drove fine to my destination but I kept it out of boost the whole time.

Drove it back to SD later and it was fine but I drove slowly.

Last night, I was getting onto the freeway and in 2nd or 3rd, while accelerating a little harder, it did it again. Sounded like it backfired a little. No timing corrections this time on 3 or 4.

No CEL. Car idles perfectly and starts right up with no problems and no extra cranking. Drives normally too except for these two instances where it seems to miss under harder acceleration.

I ran a datalog this morning on the way to work but I don't expect to see anything. I kept it under 5lbs of boost pretty much the whole trip and the car was completely normal.

No leaking fluids or anything that I can see.

Does this sound like a failing coil? Plug issue? My NGK's are probably just over a year old. I haven't had a chance to take them out yet for inspection but I'll most likely do that tonight. Any other thoughts?
 


haste

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#3
I found I would have a "misfire" issue like you are describing when the gap on my plugs would go out of spec. It doesn't take long. It normally would happen after cruising for a while then trying to get on it hard. I think mountunes recommendation of replacing plugs every 10k miles on a tuned engine is a good idea. I've thought about pulling my plugs at 10k and just regapping them but I haven't tried that yet.
 


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MI
#5
Had similar symptoms and also thought it was coils and plugs. Changed them and the issue did not go away. Turns out I had a failing CV joint. It never made any noise, but under high load and low RPMs it vibrated the car like a misfire. Worth a slip under the car to do a visual on your CV joints.
 


OP
SrsBsns

SrsBsns

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Thread Starter #6
Ordered new plugs and coils. I'll follow up when they get here to see if it solves it.
 


OP
SrsBsns

SrsBsns

Active member
Messages
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Location
San Diego
Thread Starter #7
Had similar symptoms and also thought it was coils and plugs. Changed them and the issue did not go away. Turns out I had a failing CV joint. It never made any noise, but under high load and low RPMs it vibrated the car like a misfire. Worth a slip under the car to do a visual on your CV joints.
I took a look last time I did my oil change... a few weeks ago... and it looked fine. I didn't see any wet spots or anything obvious that would indicate it's failing. I also don't get any noise when turning. Plus I know the car pulled timing when accelerating, so I don't think it's the CV. I can't imagine timing would be affected unless knock was detected.
 


OP
SrsBsns

SrsBsns

Active member
Messages
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Location
San Diego
Thread Starter #8
Just to close the loop on this one...
Ordered NGK coils and Motorcraft OE plugs from Rockauto. Installed over the weekend. Fixed the problem completely.
The step 1 colder plugs I had on there looked fine, so I'm assuming one of the coils may have been starting to fail.

I did find some oil on the #1 and #2 coil packs, so I'm thinking I have a leaking VC gasket that I'll have to get around to doing.
 




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