96 2.2 Cylinder Misfire

[marragtop]

I have 96 Camry, 2.2 4 cyl, AT, 210K miles. I've owned it for the last 10 years and have taken good care of it. Recently, I'm experencing a sporatic miss (dead miss at times) in the engine when it's under power (going up hill). When that happens, the CEL starts blinking and will continue to blink until it smoothes out. It keeps throwing the 303 (engine misfire cylinder 3). I've replaced plugs, wires, distributor cap and rotor with no improvement.

I'm starting to think maybe this is a fuel delivery problem, or a problem with the cat converter. There are no other codes present, and it always gives me the 303 code. I would think that if it is fuel related I'd get other misfire codes sometimes.

Does anyone have any suggestions or insight into this? Thanks in advance for any replies.

[BMR]

Might be a fuel injector going bad... Hard to test those yourself especially since it misses only under power. You could try swapping injector #3 to another cylinder and see if the misfire code changes to that cylinder.

Could also be low compression on cyl #3. Is it burning oil?

[leakyseals]

There are a few things left to look into:

1. Dirty combustion chamber causing a bad spark. Does the engine burn any oil? Any blue startup smoke? Could have a bad valve seal or ring in that cylinder. Compression test will point you in a direction.
2. Dirty/faulty injector. Spray pattern, leaks, bad injector o-ring on that cylinder.
3. Valve clearance issue. May need a valve adjustment. Tolerances can change over the years. Sometimes loose where you can hear an audible ticking, sometimes too tight causing a ruff idle and improper sealing of the combustion chamber.
4. Vacuum leak somewhere exposing #'s 1-3 on that cylinder.
5. Tired/lazy upstream o2 sensor exposing #'s 1-3 on that cylinder.

If it were me I'd start with a heavy dose of techron concentrate plus in a few tanks of gas. Has the additive PEA which is what you want to attack the effects of ethanol, gas and carbon deposits. Will help help with 1 and 2. If that doesn't work consider the other options including valve adjustment. valve adjustment last, because its the most expensive.

[marragtop]

Thanks for the replies. Car doesn't use any oil and normally the power is fine. Valves are quiet so I dont think it is a compression or valve adjustment issue. If it was a bad O2 sensor, wouldnt that throw an O2 code? I added injector cleaner a few days ago, but havent driven it very much. As to the vacuum leak, if that were the case, wouldn't it continually miss?

[leakyseals]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Not all fuel system/injector cleaners have the same chemistry. The ones with PEA are what you want. Audible noise cannot determine valve clearance issue if its become too tight. Too tight is fairly common, so its possible. A lazy upstream o2 would show no code, but set the air/fuel mix improperly.

[1996camry]

do not replace your O2 sensor because if you have bad O2 sensors. the code of sensor will show up. catlatic converter is not bad because if converter bad..they check engine light come one P0420.

you might have 1 fuel or 2 fuel injectors.. do a google search and buy fuel injector checker (electronic come blink light if your injector is good).. do a search and buy or remove swap injector around to see which one is bad. if you do that, it's a paint of lot of labor doing that... if you just get fuel injector checker and it's easy to use...

click at link to show how misfire

http://realfixesrealfast.com/realfix...a_misfire.html

[1996camry]

check out another link with tool detects misfire
http://realfixesrealfast.com/realfix...uick_test.html