I have a 1998 2.8 daily driver that just stopped starting one day. I pulled the spark plugs out, and when I turn the key to see if they spark, they all fire at the same time. This isn't normal right? Would could be causing it to do that?

 

Well... Say your idle RPM is 600 (to make this easy), that's 600 spins of the engine per minute, which makes 10 per second... So all of the spark plugs would be firing once every .1 seconds. Each one would have .1/6 seconds, or 1/60 of a second to spark... Now keep in mind that your idle RPM will actually be even higher than 600... Are you SURE they are all firing at once? It may be possible to see that (I've never tried though) but it wouldn't be super obvious, I'd think.

 

I can't even get the car to idle because it wont start. I'm pretty sure it's all at once because there is a 1 second pause between every time they spark together. So it's not that they're firing so fast I can't recognize it.

 

maybe bad coil pack? anyone know of a way to test it?

 

it was the coil pack. put in a new one and it solved the problem.