'96 Explorer 4.0 ignition miss

[Steve Porter]

I've got a '96 Explorer XLT with 296,000 miles on it and for the past 8,000 miles it has been sputtering. I pulled each wire at the coilpack, one at a time, and found that the middle wire on the passenger side had no spark (all the rest were strong arcs). I changed out the wires and also the plugs (one had lasted 276,000 miles, so my hat's off to Ford), but it's not the wires or plugs.

I haven't run the code on it yet - didn't want to spend the money if it was something simple like plugs or wires - but looks like that will be the next step. Would the coilpack be faulty. Seems like that's the next logical step, since there's no spark on that one, yet all five others are strong arcs.

 

[corkey]

the code you will get will probably show a misfire on the cylinder that had no spark from the coil,, , chances are the coil pack is bad, as all the others are firing fine.
after changing plugs and wires , that is all that can be left to cause the no spark condition,

 

[Steve Porter]

'96 Ford Explorer misfire - replaced coil pack and fixed it

You're advice was spot on. Switching out the coil pack with a NAPA replacement solved the misfire. For an engine that's got 270,000 miles on it, it sure runs smoothly.

Thanks for your input.