4th cylinder misfiring problem

[fractal]

I took my 97 Camry LE (4 cyl) into a garage because of an occasional stutter when hitting the gas and sometimes while idling. I don't know if it's necessarily related or not, but it was also usually going way up in RPM before actually shifting gears often resulting in a really slow acceleration. It turned out to be a misfire in the fourth cylinder but the guy at the garage couldn't really pinpoint the problem. They were eventually able to seemingly stop the misfire (I know he's not an absolute idiot--he's done good work for me before) but just days later after getting it back, exact same problem again. He had it for a couple weeks, so the standard stuff was all checked, and I assume a lot of nonstandard stuff as well. Anyone ever have a problem like that with the 4th cylinder misfiring and something pretty uncommon was the cause?

[Ruffrydasean]

Well.. when My dad's expedition had cylinders misfiring all the time it was the ignition coils..

maybe something to do with your spark plug system...

[88 LE]

Definitely something with the ignition system.

Could be a plug, wire, or coil.

[500KCamry]

What 88LE --^-- says. I had a bad plug wire (no. 1) and the car was sluggish when accelerating, hesitated during acceleration.

You could pull the distributor cap and check the rotor and cap contacts, clean if necessary.

If your car becomes hard to start when really cold, or after it is warmed up, it might be the ignition coil (inside the dist. cap.), or a component inside the distributor. The rotor and coil can be bought and replaced, but anything else in there and it's the whole distributor.

[Mike Gerber]

Originally Posted by 500KCamry

What 88LE --^-- says. I had a bad plug wire (no. 1) and the car was sluggish when accelerating, hesitated during acceleration.

You could pull the distributor cap and check the rotor and cap contacts, clean if necessary.

If your car becomes hard to start when really cold, or after it is warmed up, it might be the ignition coil (inside the dist. cap.), or a component inside the distributor. The rotor and coil can be bought and replaced, but anything else in there and it's the whole distributor.

I think the generation 4 5SFE engines use distributorless ignition systems, so there is no rotor or cap. It still could be a plug wire or a coil. Since this car is OBD II, I would take it to a place like Autozone where you can get the codes read for free. If it is constantly misfirring, it should eventually throw a code telling you what cylinder the problem is in. Then you could check out that wire or coil (if they have individual coils).

Good luck.

Mike

[500KCamry]

Originally Posted by Mike Gerber

I think the generation 4 5SFE engines use distributorless ignition systems, so there is no rotor or cap. It still could be a plug wire or a coil. Since this car is OBD II, I would take it to a place like Autozone where you can get the codes read for free. If it is constantly misfirring, it should eventually throw a code telling you what cylinder the problem is in. Then you could check out that wire or coil (if they have individual coils).

Good luck.

Mike

Oops, I forgot ... as my Gen4 is a V6.