OK, not poking fun at you directly. Duralast would be my last choice for ignition wires for my van.

 

If you'll go back and read the entire post you'll see that we already came to that conclusion and that we are both using the ceramic Accel wires now.

 

First clarification: I don't know for sure, but I suspect you would need the long ones if you have the metal shields around the spark plugs and the shorter ones if you do not.

Second clarification: It was 5 years ago, even though I've been carrying that part number around in my head, it just slipped out of my mind only yesterday. (and yes they were the correct ones.)

So are you saying that replacing the Duralast plug wires with new plug wires fixed your CEL issue too?

 

Well, yes and no. I still have the rough idle at warmup issue, so that causes the PCM to read cylinder misfires and turns the CEL on.

However, if I warm up the engine and then reset the CEL I can drive for the duration of an entire tank of fuel and the engine never misfires once.

So the Accel wires have the engine running smoothly but I have yet to find the source of my rough idle at warmup.

 

This happened to me a while back. I had to let the engine warm up before driving it, otherwise it ran like crap and there was a shudder and a misfire. It turned out to be a bad spark plug even though they weren't that old. I was able to find which cylinder it was by watching the misfire count when using my code scanner in the live data monitor mode.

In your case it could also be a bad injector.

 

Well, I'll have to rule out spark plugs for now. I bought the van with Champions installed, which I hate. I installed Denso 4503 (Platinum TT) plugs immediately and while overall performance improved my startup idle issue remained.

I have yet to replace my coolant temp sensor because it's buried behind the top hose neck, as you know, but I will get to that soon because my alternator bearing is beginning to get noisy and will soon need changing. I can't help thinking this sensor has something to do with my problem.

If I do in fact have a bad injector will it cause the PCM to throw misfire codes for multiple cylinders and not just the cylinder where it's located?

 

It might not throw a code at all. It takes two consecutive trips to set a misfire trouble code. So if the misfire exists on the first trip but not the second, the 2 trip counter resets to zero again.

 

Understood. But if the bad injector does cause the PCM to throw a code will it be only for the cylinder associated with that injector, or can different cylinders be affected?

My CEL indicated misfires for multiple cylinders when I read the codes.

 

Yes the injector code will be per cylinder, assuming you have one injector per cylinder and not throttle body injection.

If you're getting a pending P0300 code, then that could indicate a few things; most notably being a bad wire connection or worn distributor shaft bushings.

 

I do not think distributor shaft bushings are too expensive. I know its typical for them to cause a misfire problem on the 318 engine. If it was me I would replace them first.

Jason