With the P0301 and P0300 codes, OBD II says that Cylinder 1 misfires.

[djordanbuilders]

Last night I had a 45-minute drive home. I felt a loss of power at the beginning. I thought my car might only have three engines. The farther I drove, the better my gas mileage got. More than it would be otherwise. I used an OBD II tool to read the codes today. P0301 and P0300. I was almost going to order new plugs at first. First, I chose to look at what was in the first barrel.

It is possible to see the wires that connect to the starting coil in the first cylinder. It could just be this green wire, I think. Electric tape was used to wrap it. Do you think that's enough? On one side, the ignition coil looks sketchy. Should I get a new one? Is that plug dead?

 

[john1tur]

All 4 plugs and the coil need to be changed.
Is there rat damage on your wiring?

 

[djordanbuilders]

Rats? I don't know. I park outside. We live in the country. There are times when mice come into our house.

 

[djordanbuilders]

As far as open lines go, that was the only place that looked sketchy.

 

[djordanbuilders]

At 115k miles, I did change all four plugs. The car has 142k miles on it now, which means those plugs have only 27k miles on them.

 

[Gendarmerie]

Put it all together and spray some peppermint rat repellent in the engine bay. There's a mouse or something chewing on things there.

If it's really chewed up, you can read this "how to" and use one of the pigtails he used to fix it for good. It works with both 1.6 and 2.0 power plants.

 

[djordanbuilders]

That's good to know. Could having just one wire out in the open have fried the spark plug, though? It can be taken out of the box for a better look. If the wiring needs to be fixed first, do I think it's worth the risk to try to put a new ignition coil and plug?

 

[Strawar]

That coil won't work because it will arc past the broken insulation. Even if you tape it up, the plug doesn't look good because the weather pack rubber is sticking out. I don't think the pin is fully set or that the wire is no longer linked to it.

 

[djordanbuilders]

which doesn't it look like what you said? #1 is the only one that's giving me trouble.

 

[Gendarmerie]

Is that how the weather pack sticks out on the other coils? There is damage to the gray rubber on #1, and there may also be damage to the blue wire.

It should be fixable with tape for now, but you'll need to get those pigtails to make it last.

The weather pack doesn't stick out as much on my coils as it does on yours.

 

[Gendarmerie]

That's how mine stand out too.

 

[Gendarmerie]

 

[Valimont64]

I think that the burned-out coil is 99.99% of the time the problem and that it needs to be changed.

 

[Valimont64]

You should be able to get away with the broken wire for now since you taped it up. Use bits from the 273502B000 wiring to fix the lead for the least amount of money. The coil may be to blame for the plug being a little dark because it didn't fire right. It wouldn't hurt to get new plugs.

 

[djordanbuilders]

Thanks to everyone for their ideas. That's where I got the new plug and coil. I bought a 273502B000 cable on eBay too. I will try to switch those wires out after I change the plug and coil.