hi all, i have a 2000 4.2. it starts just fine, but about 5 seconds after it has started, the car will make a stutter or pulsing movement and the check engine light will flash on and off.... a few seconds later the stuttering will go away and the check engine light will turn off. i have noticed that this only happens when the engine is not warmed up like in the mornings when i am leaving. any ideas on what this might be? any help is appreciated, thanks

 

The engine light flashing means the engine is miss-firing, i would have someone check the codes, you might have a large vaccum leak thats causing a miss-fire, or something is wrong with the ignition system.

 

Take a look at the coil packs

 

from searching through some other posts, it looks to be the coil packs. how bad is this going to be to drive with? i am obviously going to drive as little as possible and probably get this taken care of tomorrow... unfortunately i am at work right now and cant get any of this taken care of right now. also when i get the code, how will i know which cylinder the code is talking about (1-8 where are they in accordance with the engine). also seems like it could be the coil pack wire, i think i am just going to change the spark plugs too while im at it. but is this going to be bad to drive home with a misfiring cylinder? thanks, and i still need to check the codes to make sure this is the actual problem

 

Kevin,
thanks it turned out to be the coil pack on cylinder 7 that was making it misfire. i changed the coil pack and all the spark plugs with some NGK iridium plugs. problem is now fixed and everything is better than normal, Thanks again!

 

Glad I could help.