Over the past month or so my car keeps triggering a check engine light. The code always reads "Cylinder 1 Misfire". I started by replacing the plugs and wires and reset the code. It went away for a few weeks and came back.....same code, so I replaced the cap and rotor and reset the code. For the past week my car has driven okay with intermittent power loss, especially in the low RPM ranges and sometimes I will smell something that reminds me of burnt peanuts. Tonight as I was pulling into my driveway, my check engine light started flashing. I haven't had a chance to read the code, but I've read that this usually indicates misfires across multiple cylinders or a severe misfire on a single cylinder.

Any ideas on what could be causing this and is this something that the average home mechanic can fix? Could my distributor be going out? Any help is appreciated.

 

i have never really heard of this.. i would check to see if any oil is getting into your plug cylinder.. sometimes this can happen i would like to say bad gas but it would have been fixxed by now.. can you tell me the exact type of motor it has?? i know it is a D16 but what model if you know

 

how about a clogged fuel injector, spark good, no fuel can cause a misfire

 

It's a D16Y8. I've checked for oil in the spark plugs. The top side of the plug cylinder is always dry as a bone. When I take the plugs out and look at the firing side, there's usually look mildly charred, sort of a smooth brownish gray.

I ususally use a bottle of Fuel System Cleaner every couple of months and always use Shell midgrade gasoline since it passed the 100,000 mile mark. Now it's at 140,000 miles.

 

i would have to say there is a clog somewhere in the system... at 140k it could be the fuel filter.. hard to tell.. could the car possibly be off timing?? that could cause a misfire as well as the code.. but i dont see why only one cylinder would be affected

 

I had the timing belt replaced at 120,000 miles by a local honda specialist. At probably 115,000 miles, I replaced the fuel filter. I'm not sure if it means much, but I have never actually felt the car misfire, except for once when I first cranked the car. Even when the computer was triggering the severe misfire code, I never felt it.

If it was off timing because of a belt, I would think that would have showed up a long time ago. I did have to take the distributor off to get to the screw that holds the rotor on, but I was having misfire codes before that and I took care to make sure it went back on at exactly the same position as it came off so that it wouldn't change the timing.

Do you think that this problem is worth diagnosing, or am I better off getting rid of it and trying to find something else on my limited budget?

Thanks for all of your replies so far.

 

Have you checked your injectors, or swapped them, what was your compression check reading.

 

Sorry for the delayed reply. I've been gone for a few days.

I haven't checked the fuel injectors or gotten a compression reading. I plan to take the fuel injectors out and clean them whenever I can get home from work before it gets too late. It will probably just have to wait until the weekend.

Do you think it would be worth it to get a plug with a stronger spark? I've been running the stock NGKs. Last time, all the NGK's were out so they gave me some kind of Champion plug at Advance. It's misfired on both, according to my computer. Should I be getting plugs with a stronger spark, or would this even have anything to do with it?

 

If the misfire is with either plugs, stay with what you have and check the other items when time permits. Hope you had a safe trip and got to accomplish what needed to be done.

 

Thanks. I'll let you know what, if anything, I find when I can get the time to check the fuel injectors, etc.