Wet weather misses

[Explorer Junky]

I have a 97 Ex with the 5.0 and AWD, Torque monsters, and such. I am getting a wet weather miss. We have had sub zero weather here in Michigan lately, and now a thaw out on Friday. After running through some puddles, and very wet rainy roads, i now have another miss. I had the CEL checked and came back as rich for O2 bank 1 sensor 1. Which I am taking thats the side the miss is on. I have old coil packs on it, fairly new wires. I did have this same problem on drivers side for quite a while and fixed it with a new plug wire on one of the cylinders. Could my coil packs be getting water in them?

 

[arco777]

Possible, but they are sealed. If a coil pack has a crack in it (they do develop them sometimes) it can arc, which is bad. I definitely think your miss is due to ignition, check all the plug wires.

Try opening your hood at dark with motor running, and look for arcs, from your coil all the way to the spark plugs. You can use a spray bottle to mist different areas and try to recreate the miss, and should see an arc.

 

[Explorer Junky]

Thanks for the reply. I will try that in about an hour. Getting dark now. The coils might have over 200,000 miles on them! Could very well be cracked. I will run this thing until the floorboards are swiss cheese.

 

[arco777]

I was on a long road trip from Alaska to Arkansas when I came upon a Taurus wagon at the side of the road. It had been raining heavily. The couple inside the Taurus explained that it had no power, and it would barely run at idle. As they started it up I observed (in the dark) an arc jumping through a hole cracked in the coil pack. It had clearly been arcing for a while and the hole had gotten larger and larger. I had some 3M VHB tape with me, which is some interesting thick double sided adhesive. Put it over the hole and suprisingly it contained the arc when the motor was restarted. The Taurus had power again and drove another few miles before the coil itself died for good.

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