Celica Forums General Discussion Engine and Performance Misfire...

Ok I got one of these little OBD testers from Autozone and it's telling me that my 2000 Celica has "multiple cylinder misfire" does anyone know how to fix such a problem?? Also, it's very sluggish, like when I take off it kinda hesitates then takes off. I bought it wrecked but it didn't have any motor damage, it only has 31,700 miles on it. Ya'll seem to know a lot about these cars and this is my first one, so any help would br great.

check out your sparkplugs...
then see if they look like any of these...
http://www.gnttype.org/techarea/engine/plugs.html

Wow your like "superfastansweringman" Thanks for the quick reply and if thats all it takes, then I'll send you $100.00 paypal...nah jk but I will give you all my thanks

Yes Spaztikid is right. Check your plugs and wires. My dads honda accord ha that same problem a few weeks ago. Cylinder 4 misfire so we got some new bosch platinum plugs for $9 and now is good as new.

Well I got my new plugs and everything sounds better <except my whining about the cost of iridium plugs> But you were o'so correct, because 2 of them looked like doo doo and the other 2 looked ok. But I just replaced them all. And what might make the all dirty down around where the plugs screws in?? and it kinda smells like gas.

Spark Plugs Install:



https://celicahobby.com/ubbthreads/thread.f_1953421936_0_collapsed_2__1.html

Hey thanks for all the helpful info guys. But just curious, can any of you burn tires or peel out whatever you wanna call it? My does sound better and all but still sluggish, won't peel out at all. What should I do now??

if you get the cel's again for mutiple cylinder missfire, you may have bought a car that was miss shifted.

ummm...what does tis mean?? also the 2 plugs that were bad, the plug wires or whatever you'd call them were dirty. Does that mean they need to be replaced??

celica has direct ignition, there are no plug wires like on a distributor powered car, (the celica also does not have a distributor hence-direct ignition)

the parts that sit over the spark plugs are actually called coil packs, they are individual coils, that are used to generate a spark to the spark plug.

the nice thing is that you can electronically advance or retard the timing, unlike distributor powered cars where you can only set it to advance or retard by a certain degree.

mis shift is a common term for blowing the engine. Its most commonly done by accelerating lets say in 3rd gear and the driver attemping to shift fast into 4th gear at 3rd gears redline, but the driver instead shifts to 2nd gear thus reving the engine up to superhuman speeds, causeing piston to valve contact.

since this engine is an interferance motor (meaning the valves will contact the piston if out of time) bent valves will result and or trashed pistons/head/motor.

when you get missfire in all 4 cyliders after a miss shfit thats the best indicator that you have bent valves because the valves wont seat properly and you wont have proper combustion, thus mis fire.

however it sounds like the 2 fouled plugs were the culprit, but if your cell turns back on and its misfire again, a mis shift could be the culprit.

My CEL hasn't came back on in a while and it's running better, but it's still acting like a dog on take off. I mean my Olds Intrigue has like WAY better take off than my Celica and that makes me awful angry. Also I have a CAI and it's kinda of a no name brand but anyways I had 2 hoses switched around and thanks to one of these articles here I fixed it, and I unhooked the battery for bout 10 mins and still no happy take off.

Sluggishness is comon on no-name CAI for the Celica. Sometimes it acts that way with with a good intake. I'd also check the throttle body for dirt. There are a lot of threads on this subject of sluggishness or bogging as some call it. Read up on some old threads and you may find what you need.

might wanna clean the maf while you're at it as well.

I cleaned the MAF sensor with some carb cleaner and a Q-tip. I was careful doing so, you don't think that messed it up do ya??

did you follow the maf cleaning instructions ? which part did you qtip swab?

never used carb cleaner before, i always use break cleaner, or electrical cleaner.

Yeah I followed it to a T. I'm gonna try cleaning the throttle body now, even though it looks as though it might take a lil longer than I'd like. It still doesn't feel like thats the problem though, but I'll give it a try.

Ok throttle body is clean like a new one. Runs better but did not fix my problem. So now I'm kinda confused, anything else ya'll know of??

could be poor maf placement on your ebayed intake, or just a poor design.

care to post up some pics of it?

Yeah I'll post some pics tomorrow, haven't got the program to re-size em right now.

I think it's interesting that only 2 of your 4 plugs were sucky.. that kinda tells me there might be something wrong and if your car is only kinda running on 2 cylanders and the other 2 are F'ed you'd be real slow. there are charts with pictures that you can compair the plugs to and it can tell you some common problems that can cause sertain types of F'ed up plugs. that missed shift thing seems like it could be a possibility if the pervious owner was stupid enough to wreck his car he was probably stupid enough to shift incorrectly and maybe damage the valves in only those 2 cylanders.

All this damaged cylinder talk is making me wonder, what kinda work is involved in fixing such a problem?? I'm thinking I'd be better off just getting another motor all together or am I over-exagherating??

Picture 1

the pipe diameter appears to be too large, especially where the maf is sittting

put your stock intake back on and reset the ecu, if the problem goes away its the ebay'ed short ram thats causing the problems.

yeah that does look pretty big.. if it's 3" I can almost gaurantee that's the problem most intakes are 2.75, but 2.5 is the stock size and that would be the best performaning intake. anyways before you go out and buy a new engine I'd get it checked out by a real mechanic and get his opinions. also if you did damage your valves and pistons it would still be cheaper to replace those than to get a new engine. it'd be a lot more costly if you had pros do it because it's a pretty involved job, but if you did it yourself you could replace all your valves your valve springs and your pistons with performance peices for maybe 1k.

Yeah I'd try putting the old air box back on but it was gone when I got the car. So I'll measure it and if it's too large I'll just buy me a good quality one from the ECelica store =) Thanks a lot for all of ya'lls help. I'll let you all know what becomes of it.

Ok, I did measure it and it's 2.75. So you think something as little as that can result in such a loss in power?? If you all truly think so then I guess I'll just shell out more money and get a name brand intake.

yes the stock diameter of the stock tube where the maf sits is 2.5 in, your maf isn't getting correct airflow readings, your ecu is probably compensating by trimming the fuel since it thinks less air is comming through since less air is passing over the maf that what is really entering the engine, and your running lean.

if you go with injen they have a low end bogging issue, aem seems to not have it, I'd go with aem.

uhhhh, what? I kinda just bought an Injen from the store here on the site. Does the low end bog hurt the acceleration? Or is it just like a bogging sound?

it becomes annoying if you daily drive the car between 2K and 3K rpms.

the injen does make a tad more power up top over aem however so its a trade off.

Ok finally done. I got rid of that ragidy little SRI and put me a AEM intake on it, and all is better. I just couldn't quite believe that something like that would cause such great problems. But it did, and thanks for all of the helpful info.

How much was your OBD testor thing?

glad to hear it.

OBD thing cost like $150.00 at AutoZone. I would recomend a higher priced more accurate one, it is an Actron. it works pretty good for erasing small insignifacant CEL's, but nothing more.

i was reading all the responses and was fixin to say get an aem intake, but before i could answer i noticed somebody else said it.

Yeah well if you have any other suggestions please post them. $200.00 AEM intake did absolutely nothing for my car. I even hacked <gasping for breath> it in 2 and moved the MAF sensor away from the throttle body. Nothing works, ANY suggestion will be tested.

I had misfiring in my car, and the car's currently in the work shop. My mechanic did some tests after my car finally just died, and it's something to do with the fuel pump (well anything from the pump to the engine is a possibility) cos when he injected gas into the engine it came back to life, so that might be a possible problem. But mine misfired like crazy, and it started to sound like a harley

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