Hi, my name is mike, and right now my car (95 Talon ESi) is sitting in my driveway from this hesitation/studdering problem I have been getting. It was very little at first like I was going down the highway and it was hesitating in fifth gear at lower RPMs, and all of a sudden when I am near home, it comes on real bad, starting to do it in every gear, and really studdering and hesitating. I used an inductance meter on it, and I am getting misfiring on pistons 1 and very little on 2. But my car hasn't thrown out any errors yet. I already took it up to get an engine diagnostic test done, and they said it threw out a TON of errors, which got me to think that my comp is bad, because the check engine light will not come on. Plus I also replaced my spark plugs, and found a decent amount of oil in the first two wells, and a little bit in the fourth, but I am pretty sure I have some bad spark plug grommets, and a bad valve cover gasket. I have searched on here for what it could be, and the list of stuff that I have found could be either of these: Valve cover gasket / spark plug grommets, Plugs(which I know its not these now) , Wires, Ignition Coil, ECU, or the cam angle wires. Also the car does idle very poorly now, because it is missing at idle. One other thing is that if I quickly give it some gas at idle, I hear a backfire out of the intake, which is probably from excess gas in the cylinder from being misfired. But I need peoples opinions on what I should check / do and what I should replace first. If you have any more questions please email me at timmay87@neo.rr.com and my AIM name is stub872005

check your e-mail do0d
_________
96 talon esi-t
san clemente, ca


as needles of ice
are the ill winds' talons

Anyone else have any other opinion on what to do, before I go out and spend a ton of money on replacing parts that I dont need to replace yet?

If you're getting misfire on 1 and 2, swap those plug wires to 3 and 4 (and vice versa). If you get the same problem in 3 and 4 then, you know it's your wires. Bosch silicone replacements run about $30 at Autozone. If the misfire stays in 1 and 2, then it's possiby plugs in those cylinders or coil imo.

Swap your wires and retest do0d.

EDIT:
You should also look to replace the VC gasket and get some new plugs. Altogether, this solution set should run you less than $100 and covers the most common sources of the problem.

Finally, does your CEL even light when you first start the car? If it doesn't light at all, it could just be that the bulb is toast and not the ECU.

Well, I just got back from autozone, and I bought some Bosch Wires, some motorcraft Plugs, and then a valvecover gasket, and spark plug grommets, and I am gonna go install all of this right now, and post again to see if it all fixed my problem.

I have an extra stock coil as well as stock wires. Email if you wanna purchase one. =)

EDIT: I see you have wires now...

ok, well I installed all of that today, but I am gonna have to wait till tomorrow to start it up, because the silicon needs to sit there for 16 - 24 hours. But I also have another question, After I took off my valve cover, I cleaned up everything, and put the gasket, and grommets in place on the valve cover, and then set it all in place and the gasket i got is blue, so after I put the cover back on, and bolted it down correctly, i could see about 1 - 1.5 mm of blue trim in between the valve cover, and head. Maybe i just now noticed it because the old gasket was grey, and really dirty. But I will find out if all this works tomorrow. anyubody know if that blue trim should be showing a little?

anybody think that blue trim is supposed to be there..... since my old gasket looked blackish / grey?

You will see some gasket material afterwards. The VC does not meet the head that closely.

/me continues crossing fingers

ok, well this sucks, I started it up, and all is good, idles fine, warms up normal, so I then give it a little gas, and it revs normal, andim like cool. So I look for any signs of leak in the valve gasket, and none, so I get in and go around the block a few times, and it drives perfectly fine. so i then go to work, get off, and drive back home in really heavy rain, and notice some slight bucking agian!!!!!! but it is not getting as bad as it was before, so its either something else that is still broke, or it could be from the water on the road going up in my intake, since my intake is really low to the ground. and there was about 2 or 3 inches of water on the road cuz it was raing so hard, but I think my problem is coming back already!!! someone help me!!!