CEL and Cruise lights blinking, and odd acceleration

This morning I went to drive my car and the CEL and cruise lights were blinking. I didn't think much of it but then the car started to shake a bit. I tried to see if it was drivable but the car seemed sluggish and almost jerky when I accelerated, needless to say I didn't make it more than a minute from my home. Any ideas?

Pull the CEL code with a code reader, post it here, and we'll tell you what's wrong.

My friend just came over and he said a P0303 code came up

That's a cylinder 3 misfire. Could be a bad coil pack, a bad spark plug, a bad fuel injector, or a bad spark plug wire.

 

Switch the coil pack with another cylinder and see if the misfire goes with it. If it doesn't, buy new plugs and spark plug wires. If that doesn't fix it, order a new fuel injector.

thanks a bunch! It's kind of odd though, I started it up later and it was fine plus the blinking lights had turned off. I took it out for a test drive and it was still fine after that, do you think it's safe to drive?

thanks a bunch! It's kind of odd though, I started it up later and it was fine plus the blinking lights had turned off. I took it out for a test drive and it was still fine after that, do you think it's safe to drive?

 

Check to make sure all the connectors on the coil packs are on tight

ok I'll check them out

I guess I should just take it in to get work done. Today I test drove the car and it was still riding fine with no lights blinking, except when I went to brake. When the brakes were almost to the floor I could feel the car shake a little but then it stopped once they were all the way down.

I wonder if the brake master cylinder is causing a bad vac leak when the brake is pressed. One of the biggest vac lines go to the master cylinder, a bad cylinder may cause a leak somehow.......?

Could also be that as you were braking your RPMs dipped down a bit low, and that caused the same misfire to happen again. A lot of these cars shudder a bit when the RPMs dip.

thanks again for all your help, I just made an appointment to get it fixed..hopefully we steered the mechanics in the right direction

You're welcome. Let us know how it turns out.

you got it

Well $270 later and a spark plug wire change, my car is running like new again!

spark plug wire? lol....

That's what they said...I don't know anything about cars sooooo yeaaaah

probably the coil pack as we suggested initially.

Yeah, but the brakes???

Coil pack job cost me $400 at the stealership for ONE PACK, so $270 is probably their typical 500x markup on a sparkplug wire.

 

Glad to hear it's running well again.

If someone could please point me in the direction of a parts store that sells spark plug wires individually...?

 

Flat-rate time on a complete set of wires (that would be 4, kids) is 1.2 hours. A set of plug wires should be well under $100 unless you opt for the solid gold variety

 

Flat-rate on changing a coil pack is .8 hours.

 

You guys can do the math, but I'm hoping that both Subieforme and gholman12's repair bills are padded a bit with some diag time. Otherwise we're talking $141/hr labor for the former and god only knows for the latter

 

I wouldn't buy an ignition coil from a dealership if you held a gun to my head so I have no idea what their list is on them.

I must be out of the loop on this but- arent the coil pack wires directly into the engine harness? I didn't think they were replaceable unless the hardness is involved. For $270 i suppose it's possible that a coil pack clip was replaced or a wire connecting into it was faulty- the clips tend to break and not seat right over a period of time, causing a phantom misfire

There's a separate coil pack that sits on top of each spark plug in our cars, so you can just unplug the spark plug wire and pull it out (though it is a bit hard to get to). I didn't know wtf was going on back when I had it done to my old OBXT, and they did it all so fast that I just paid the bill and left. They charged me $270 for the coil pack part alone. F*ckers.