a couple days ago i noticed that when i started the car after work when it sat for about 10 hours in 15 degree cold weather, it would stall after shifting into drive. I would restart the cold car and put it in drive and the same thing would happen until it warmed up a minute.

I assumed it was a cold start sensor, and since all i really need to do if that is the case is to let the car warm up a couple minutes before driving it.


today was a different story. The car sat all day and started like a normal. i pull out of the parking lot and drive 5 minutes until i hit the highway.
I give it some gas to merge into traffic. I noticed a little bit of a miss but dismissed that to to an extremely cold day.

After a minute on the highway at 70 mph, the engine light flashes. fuck.

the car still can hang with traffic but if i try to accelerate hard it is missing. I believe this is a "limp home" mode.

I could hear that the motor was much louder than normal and that acceleration was much more pronounced once i got off the highway.


So once home i get the codes 1133 0300 0302 0303 from the obdII.

It sounds like a mis-fire to me.

The car is a 99 es300 with 136k. Within the past 2 years i have replaced an o2 sensor, maf sensor, charcoal canister, timing belt, battery, plugs, pcv, fuel filter and always change the air filter(purolator).


I decide to get new plugs again since there are 35k on the current denso iridium's. I know these things go 100k, but i bought some just in case i found a bad one.


all plugs looked normal except the middle one near the firewall. It was a little darker and smelled like fuel. It was not wet, but darker. i only replaced this one and made sure the old ones were gapped correctly.

Afterwards i checked each of the front three coil packs unplugged while starting the car to see if it was a bad plug, butr the misfire was more pronounced when i tried this so who knows.

after this i got the codes 1305, 1315 and 1325. Most likely that was from trying to test the packs



Does anyone know what else i can try??

Can i take just the coil packs to the stealership to have them tested or do they need to be on the car?
Can an independent check these out also??



:cliffs:

car runs rough
is it coils?
or is it something else

 

i also have about 1/4 tank gas, could it be bad gas???? I didn't have anyother problems with the other 3/4 tank

 

I would certainly put a bottle of dry gas in the tank

I have had a very similar problem with my explorer twice. The first time a bottle of dry gas fixed it and the other it was new plugs. So since you have already done plugs you should do the dry gas. It seems we are getting worse and worse gas around here

 

i may pick up a couple bottles and try it. Would that throw codes and make it run very rough

 

Moisture in your gas can cause misfiring which can cause it to run rough and throw codes. So I would say its certainly worth a shot for the few bucks it will cost. Especially since you said it is worse when its cold

 

Could be a lot of things, dry gas is a good cheap place to start. Something is going on with cylinders 1 and 2 the p0300 is multiple cylinder misfire, the p0301 is cylinder one and p0302 is cylinder 2, which leads me to believe it is probably not fuel. The other good news is that it probably, at worst, is the coils due to being isolated. Nothing is worse then chasing a p0300, the specific cylinders make this much easier to diagnose. I don't recall the firing order on these, but try identifying which cylinders are which and swap cylinder 1's coil with cylinder 3 through 6, see if the code jumps as well, if it does, you've got to bad coils(which is odd, but weirder things have happened) The P1133 is A/F ratio sensor bank 1 sensor 1, that could be tied to cylinders 1 and 2 not firing or it could be some cross talk in the ecu... its really hard to, say extreme cold sometimes does funny things to cars.

edit - I don't recall how the coils are set up on these, there sometimes is a short spark plug wire on V6 toyota's of this era, check for moisture/corrosion if such wires are present.

 

I had the same problem with my suburban, and it turned out to be a loose distributor cap. I replaced almost all the electrical parts before I found out about the cap.

It could be so many things. I would start with the fuel filter, fuel pressure, and maybe the injectors and then go to the electrical stuff. Camshaft Position sensor, MAP sensor, Idle Air Control Valve, etc.

I always like to start with the cheapest fix and work my way up. It's a gamble, but it might payoff.


Good luck.

 

i also checked all possible hoses and no real problems. i will call the toyota dealer at 7 to see if they can test the coils.

 

damn the toyota dealer can't test them off the car

 

well, still getting 0300 0302 and 0303. i am thinking it has to be something else besides the gas

 

Sounds like the coils to me too...

Rich, if you swap the coils around, the p030x codes should follow the coil from cylinder 1, like Mr. Tim suggests. That's the easiest way to test coils on the car (unless you have access to a known good coil from another car or a new one).

Having miss fires on cylinders 1 and 2 is weird, but swap the #1 coil with the #3 coil and see if you get the p0301 code to change to a p0303 code. If it does, then you know the #1 coil (now in #3) is bad. Rinse and repeat with the #2 coil

 

I wasn't positive that it was the coil, so i called tho local goodyear service center and took it in for them to diagnose. No one else was able to get me in today. It cost me $95 to confirm my beliefs, but they also told me which cylinder it was. I called ahead of time to see who had the coil in stock, and everyone had the same price; list.

So, i paid $95 for the diagnosis and $95 for the coil from toyota. Not my idea of fun, but it is still cheaper than taking it to the dealer and then paying for the labor and extra's they charge. I also got it fixed myself and should have purchased the coil first and then try to install it, but it is fixed and i am happy with the result.

thanks all

 

Does this mean Lexus is a pos too?

 

this thing is the biggest pos that i have owned, err the hyundai was worse. I replaced a lot of crap on this car.

BUt yeah, this does qualify as a pos