hey guys,

so i finally moved to San Diego today, yay! anyways here's how the past couple of days went for me...

Saturday (1 day before the move) - I take my friend to her car that died in the parking lot because the battery
has had it. So i park my car and shut it off and get the 10mm out to disconnect her battery. I pull it and place the
battery in my car. I start the motor and all of a sudden i get a familar rough idle and the check engine light is blinking..
WTF!?! so leaving the car alone and turned off...manages to break itself (that makes sense right?) so i pop the hood and
start checking connectors because about 2 months ago this same thing happened and it was a loose connector. Under the
hood trying to fix it, i get no such luck. So i go ahead and drive to the nearest Kragen to get her a new battery. And also
to see if they can hook up to my computer to tell me what the hell the problem is... of course they don't do that, you have to
pay the outrageous price and do it yourself. I drive the car home soon after (yes i kept it @ low RPMs and about 40 mph).
get home and start trying to eliminate ideas....

Compression test - successful (185-190 psi)
Pull and check all the spark plugs - success
now i losened up the coils with the spark plugs still attached and started the motor
and 1 by 1 slowly pull the coil away from the plug to hear the arching sound that the cylinder is firing
all of them are firing except #2.... hmm maybe its a failed coil?
nope...swaped them around to elimnate that problem, same with swaping the plugs around!
so the only thing that is before the coil is the HOT trigger wires that lead to the coils.
What controls this? the Ignition Control Module! what kind of crap is that?

Monday (1 day behind moving because my car is dead) I call all around to junk yards to automotive shops in a 50 mile radius.
they want $425-360 for that stupid little chip! finally i was able to locate one for $160 that retailed for $360. Im sorry but i hate electrical systems
with a passion, all they do is cause stress and problems. so after forking over the cash i go ahead and install the new chip and BOOM!

Everything is back to normal....Except the damn CEL light is still on!

so after driving all the way down here, the light is still on. I think tomarrow afternoon im going to just unplug the battery
and reset it manually...

that's my awesome weekend!

 

Run a search on cylinder 2 or ignition control module. There seems to be a factory problem with ignition control module soldering, as many/most seam to fail on cyl 2.

 

oh no the car drove 400 mi with the new ICM in there, but the check engine light was on the whole way down there...
i got about 130mi on 1/4 tank of gas!

so once again the last time the CEL came on it took a trip to the bar and 2 pitchers of beer to come out and find it turned off in the car
now i just moved the car to change parking spaces and the CEL light is off....

my car is possessed!

why does it do that?

 

You have a fault code... Get your codes scanned. Any auto parts store should be able to do it for free.

 

even if the CEL light went away? i thought that means that the system checks out and all is well

i didn't disconnect the battery or anything.... it turned off on its own

 

Nope... When a CEL illuminates it has found an error. If it goes off the error is still stored in the ECU until it gets reset.

 

Clear the codes. Even if the Cel is now off, the code is still stored in memory.

 

Had the same problem with #5 coil, turned out one of the wires in the connector to the coil was broken. Seperate the wires on the connecter while the car is started and wiggle them one by one, that is how I found the problem. Hope this helps.