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420a cold weather, cel flickering

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viseversa101

Proven Member
80
3
Mar 10, 2013
millbury, Ohio
Weather has been crazy here in Ohio to say the least. Sub zero temps. I had an issue a week ago with my power steering belt and had to swap it. Now this morning on my commute to work it was chugging, and as i got to work the cel was flickering. I thought it was oil weight and I checked. Yup, full of 10w 30 synth. I drove it home and it was still there :( diagnostic anyone?
 
When did you get your oil change done?
Did you loose almost all power?
Is it shifting correctly?

Not really sure what your talking about with the oil, or why your using that heavy of a weight in winter...
Sounds like a coil pack blew up and your missing.
A flashing cel is a catalyst damaging missfire.
With it running, open the hood and pull a single spark plug wire.
Does it die? Does it start to drop rpm and want to stall?
Or does it do nothing?
If it does die or stall, the coil pack is good. Move on to the other one and try again.
Hope this helps, and I live in akron ohio. Its been a hell of a winter
 
theres a significant loss of power
it sputters so horribly i dont notice shifting
when i run it n pull plugs, the 3rd cylinder kills it. 1,2,4 it keeps running but when i pull 3rd cylinders spark plug wire it dies :(
 
I don't have a 420a talon but my girlfriend does have a 2005 neon.... not 100% sure on your coil pack situation but she only has one. Replace the coil pack or replace the one going to cylinder one and four

Sorry one more test before you buy a coil pack.
Swap wires with a known good cyclinder to cyl 3.
If it does not die pulling cylinder three again, but it does when you pull the wire from the cylinder you just swapped then its the wire.
If that does nothing then try swapping a spark plug. If this does nothing again then it is your coil pack.

This might be confusing, its a little hard for me to type it out than to show you

I'm making this harder than it needs to be. Cylinder three is thee known good one. You neeed to use the know good wire from cylinder three to check the rest.
 
wire swap did nothing, onto swapping a spark plug...Wish me inexpensive luck LOL

well that was not the case, wire/plug swap did nothing....its always cyl 3.....so that leads me to believe replacing the coil pack will fix it ehh?
 
Yes replace coil pack. Hopefully chryslers awesome pcm design didn't take a crap on you.
 
Is his boosted?..... because that brings a whole new world to the table..
 
Test your coil pack with a multimeter set to ohms like this before you start buying parts. Also can you retrieve any codes the computer may have stored. Pos em up if you can and go from there
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Do not use an ohm meter. There are two coils in a coil pack. Primary and secondary. You can only measure one with an ohm meter. I have been burned on this one before...
 
Do not use an ohm meter. There are two coils in a coil pack. Primary and secondary. You can only measure one with an ohm meter. I have been burned on this one before...
WTFWTF its only going to measure resistance of the coil as described in the Manual above. The car will be off, this will test the integrity of the coil pack itself. This will at least eliminate the possibility its bad instead of throwing money at the car without diagnosis.
 
I work at a dealership.
Car comes in with a miss.
Checked resistance of coil pack with 300 dollar snap on dmm.
Coil passed.
Everything passed inspection.
Field tech comes out and finds coil pack secondary wire coil with an open by eliminating everything else in the ignition system.
This is why I don't trust the resistance test.
Believe what ever it is you want to, this is just my reasoning to what I believe
 
See if you can get that code checked, it may come up with a few different things.

And how long have you ran 10w-30 synthetic?
 
Ok ty for the replies, first off I am not boosted so that can be eliminated. I doubt it would be my rings just because my compressing has been so beautiful up until last time I checked which was right before winter. I didnt really know how to go about testing my coil pack with the multimeter so +1 for the values and diagram, really helpful. Also i've ran 10w 30 syn since spring...Just never took the weight down before winter which yes I am ashamed of :(

So yea the plan for now once I get off work would be to multimeter the coil pack and make sure thats good if not, replace it. Ive yet to hear anyone say cam sensor or any sensor for that. Not sure if I mentioned this but I did hit a drift at about 70 mph and ended up in a corn field of snow a few weeks ago. I was being pointed in the direction of it being a sensor by the guys I work with.
 
Just get the code read. it is the best step in the right direction. If its a cam sensor I'm going to be pissed...
 
During lunch with a little ambition and multimeter, the plug read 1ohm out of both 1 and 3 cyl and 2 and 4 cyl. However secondary resistance didnt read anything ......
 
The secondary wiring is almost a "switch". Will only be able to test when the computer tells the coil pack to fire that cylinder or "switch" and let the current flow to the spark plug
 
Ah.. its more complicated than that.. I just suck at explaining things.
Its flow of electricity. Until secondary coil is powered, primary coil will not flow voltage/amperage.
 
If your ohms are reading 1 then your coil is bad. It should be between .51-.61 like the diagram says. In winter time you should be running 5w and not 10w for oil. Since its that cold you need to be careful obviously.

What is your plug gap set to?
 
yes I know and was embarrassed to admit the weight and my lack of motivation, this endeavor is encouraging enough. I will be changing the oil to 5w30 syn n replacing coil pack if nothing else shows when getting my codes read later today.

Plug gap, I cant recall.
 
With a spark issue your cel will flicker because it's misfiring but once it stops the cel will go away. So I bet your code will be p303 which is misfire on cylinder 3. With a new coil and properly gapped plugs it should fix your problem, in theory LOL

Do you let your car fully warm up by idle before you drive when it's really cold?
 
for sure, about 15-20 minutes to warm up before I take off

Ok so I installed a new coil pack, cleaned up my plugged and regapped them to .044 and viola, Now I have the powah! Ty kindly to everyone who got involved!!
 
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