code po300 help
 

ok saturn guru`s heres the scenario,

been getting cyl2 misfires on our 2002 1.9 dohc sc2 . tried cleaning the plug and that was always a temp solution . so i finally done a tune up .
4 new plugs and new wires .

ran great for about 9 days . this morning the wife goes out and starts it up and its running like cr*p. so i tell her leave it and take my truck .

i go out and start it just now and its running fine again . i do a pending code check and see a po300 multiple engine misfire code pending .


egr valve???

1) What type of plugs did you use? Non-copper plugs have been known to cause misfire issues. Get stock NGK if you can.

2) How did the old plugs look when you pulled them? Were they all oil soaked? How has plug 2 looked when you would pull it and clean it?

3) How much oil does it use per 3000 miles?

I would normally think ICM or coils at this point but if you can clean the plug as a temp solution then that wouldn't add up.

While you're at autozone or similar getting new NGKs do a loan-a-tool and get a compression tester so we can see what we are working with. It's free -- you put down a deposit, use tool, then get deposit back. Instructions for compression tests are all over the net.

just ran it to the store ,when i started off it was stuttering until it reached about a grand on the tach then it would clear up .done that for a few pull outs. when i left the store it was running fine .

i suspect egr valve ,its not plugs or it would run bad all the time .raining too much to dig into it any further right now

during a break in the rain i took the egr valve off and cleaned it . update in a couple days

update

still having issues .changed plugs from autolites to ac/delco`s. no change .
so i pull the wires off at the plug ends and wipe them down and check for oil on them .
this returned the engine to normal for about 4 days .this morning (a foggy misty morning) the wife starts the car and i hear the misfires once again (pulling hair out).she leaves the car and takes the suv .

i go out an hour later and now its fine again:mad::rolleyes:. ran the engine and looked at the wires for any arcing and touched them to see if i could feel any voltage seeping out them ,nothing .(wires are new and bought the good oem ones at napa)

so for kicks i unplugged and replugged the control unit(big silver box behind battery)just in case its a dirty connection issue .

what to check next??

i am thinking about changing out the valve cover gasket ,but hate just throwing money at a problem and hoping it goes away .

this is a intermittent issue and i dont understand why .

could it be from a malfunctioning remote start unit??

reason i ask is this car has a remote starter,one day after i remote started the car i could not turn it off from the keyfob anymore .so i just stopped using the remote start .

now its running good again for a few days . one rainy morning it was acting up again .since that day its been ok .
went and ordered a new ignition control unit from ebay at half the cost of parts stores .

more on this after the part gets here .

A diagnostic code P0300 basically says it missfired. No real surprise, you heard the thing missfire. The 0300 said it did. What other if any codes were there?
While it may happen when the weather is clear and dry you seem to emphasize that it is misty and rainy when it happens.
And of course that can cause a problem.
If that is a problem at least one reason for it being a problem is a dirty engine leaving lots of locations were accumulated crud can collect moisture and give problems. Cleaning the engine bay is at least a partial solution that may give some benefits. The hard part is the cleaning. A high pressure hose from a car wash usually can do a good job. The negative is that it is wet thus give temporary problems until it dries off.
Derf pointed out that something other than the old fashioned (now) copper plug are the spark plug of choice for this engine. There is a reason for that and the reason in part is something like a platinum plug can actually cause a miss-fire due to the way the ignition works on the car.
You said you changed from Auto-light to AC/Delco with no change in operation. O.K., that is fine but and there is a but. Which one or both were platinum or copper. That was not answered. And as a Platinum plug CAN cause a miss-fire, if your AC/Delco's are a platinum plug, then they are a potential problem.
Derk suggested the OEM NGK for a reason. They are a copper plug.
I will agree, NGK plugs are not a mandatory brand but they are the right plug. I use Champion's myself, but they are a copper plug. I make sure of that and I am not having a problem. So the question is still valid. Are you using a Copper Plug?

"Are the spark plugs soaked with oil when you take one out to check them? If so that is a problem.
That has not been answered.

Now to be honest, changing parts may solve a problem but at the moment I do not see a reason to change a part in reading the things that have been written.

Certainly changing a valve cover gasket is a solution, but it is a solution to oil leaking all over the place causing the engine to be dirty and the car marking it's territory like a lost puppy trying to pee.

It is not a solution to a miss fire unless part of the problem is a dirty engine.

Cleaning the spark plugs solved things temporarily? Was the spark plug oil soaked? What did the plug look like? Was it half dead from age and miles? Have you checked the condition of the new ones?

Did you run a compression test?

What is the oil mileage, that question has not been answered. And are there ANY other codes when checked?

no compression test
valve cover does not leak bad at all .just noticed a little oil around the plugs ceramic when i pulled one ,thus oil could be leaking past the cover at the plug hole .
engine not dirty ,been pretty clean clean since i bought it .
plugs are not platinum ,i hate platinum plugs .just standard ac/delcos .

car been running good again over a week now .the ignition control unit is here but i was gonna wait until the misfire happened again and swap it right at that time to see if it goes away .
of course as soon as i bought the part it started running fine again .

old plugs were worn ,the electrode worn down .this car sees alot of road .
ngk plugs were not available when i bought plugs .
car burns a little oil ,about a quart a month .so i havent changed the oil regularly lately .

[QUOTE=john doe;43788]no compression test
unquote
Fair enough. The problem seems to be intermittent so a compression test might not indicate anything. But then again it might. It would be nice to know information

Quote:
valve cover does not leak bad at all .just noticed a little oil around the plugs ceramic when i pulled one ,thus oil could be leaking past the cover at the plug hole .
Unquote
To have the oil some how get into the engine,, particularly a cylinder from this source is a bit of a stretch. It probobly would have no affect on your problem.

Quote
engine not dirty ,been pretty clean clean since i bought it .
plugs are not platinum ,i hate platinum plugs .just standard ac/delcos .
Unquote'
Nothing wrong with platinum plugs. They have a place. I just changed a set on my Chrysler purchased new in 2007, 100,000 miles ago. I have seen more wear on copper plugs at 30,000 miles. And nothing wrong with those either as they too have a place. And in the case of the S series Saturn they actually perform a function due to the weird characteristic of the ignition system used.
While insistence is placed on the use of the NGK plugs because they are indeed a copper plug which satisfies the ignition, I use Champions because they are my preference and they too work well. If the two brands you used were copper I personally do not see any reason why they would cause a problem such as you are describing.

Quote:
car been running good again over a week now .the ignition control unit is here but i was gonna wait until the misfire happened again and swap it right at that time to see if it goes away .
of course as soon as i bought the part it started running fine again
Unquote:
Well? Maybe this problem did have something to do with moisture in the air. I have seen it happen. It is spooky and some what unbelievable these days with the sophistication of the electronics and packaging with todays cars. But they made the "Points Grease" or Connector Grease for a reason and that was to coat the terminals on connectors to prevent moisture from attacking the individual pin connections so it can and does happen and is preventable. Think about getting some to keep in your tool box to use when connectors are unplugged for what ever reason. I keep some handy and feel it has payed off using it.

Quote
old plugs were worn ,the electrode worn down .this car sees alot of road .
ngk plugs were not available when i bought plugs .
Unquote
I enjoy a car as a hobby and have and do own show cars. But for me a car is to be driven so I drive my show cars. It gets them dirty and wears hem out but dang, I sure enjoy driving to shows.

Quote
car burns a little oil ,about a quart a month .so i havent changed the oil regularly lately .Unquote.

One of the reasons to change the oil is to get rid of dirty engine oil. Just adding oil is not the best way to deal with that.
But most importantly is to change the filter. After about 3 to 4 thousand miles it's filtering capability is pretty much shot and it quits filtering. That is hard on the engine and does not help engine wear very much. Thanks for the information.
Crossed fingers at this point in time is about the only thing I can think of.
No engine codes and nothing other obvious to me at the moment.

update :

car shuddered the other day and threw a cyl 2 misfire code (nothing new) ,i read the code ,cleared it and it was fine rest of that day .
this morning ( a damp,dreary ,misty,foggy kind of morning)the car is misfiring bad enough the wife cant take it to work .
so , this is my chance . she leaves the car and i change out the ignition control module(part the coils sit on top of) with a new part i bought on ebay .
she fires right up with no misses .

only time will tell if this was the fix . if you dont hear back from me then this fixed it . if it persists i will surely update the thread . wish me luck .!

raining this morning and once again the misfire (or misfires) is back . so the icu replacement did not help .
nothing like throwing money away .

getting frustrated with this car .

just checked the codes again . now its a cyl 2 misfire again . out of sheer curiosity and frustration i swapped the coils from left to right just to see if the problem follows the coil .
now its running good again .so again only time will tell .its drying up out there too so that itself could be a factor .

with all this surrounding cyl 2 i am beginning to wonder if it could be a injector?

Well? Why not, I guess.
I recently went through something similar on one of the cars I have. It is one that has a 1975 engine in it and in 2001 I converted it to a full fuel injection system. The engine management package was a factory direct conversion representing a 1994 Jeep engine control and while the results were mixed initially it id turn out to be a mechanically sound move. And it ran quite well up to about a year ago when it started to have what turned out to be a lean mixture back fire;
And it drove me nuts. I was able to obtain what is a very extremely heavy duty scan tool, a Snap On unit that was current for the years of the cars I am interested in using one on, the OBD-1 Logic for this car and the Pre-OBD-1 variation that my 94 Saturn has and the only error code this thing was able to pull was a map sensor overpressure code which was the direct result of the back fire, not the cause of it.
Being Frustrated to the nth degree it finally dawned on me to use some fuel injection cleaner to see if something was dirty. A product that in general I do not think is overly beneficial. But the first application lessened the incidence of backfiring. The second application eliminated it.
It ain't going to hurt to try I guess and see what happens. Use a good one though. The STP line of heavy duty injection cleaner has worked for me. And I am sure there are others.
Give at least one tank of gas using the stuff and see what happens. I went through two bottles of the stuff and I am glad I did.

i did try a bottle of fuel injection cleaner and it ran good for about 2 weeks afterwards .maybe time to try again .

That is a positive reaction. Then try it again. And purchase one of the better brands and get two bottles of them. There is some raspy fuel being manufactured now and as I have been in the hobby for longer then the age of my oldest children I have not seen a problem until the last 4 or 5 years and it will plug injectors among other things.
I do not drive my Saturn as often as I should and it suffers from sitting now. It is some that needs to be learned when it comes to maintaining something like that. A car that represents a hobby rather than a need for transportation.
"Specially something that is as complex as my Saturn is in comparison to my other collector cars. I have gone through 2 bottles of a premium brand fuel injector cleaner now and my previously mentioned AMC car with a hotrodded I-6 engine ran like a Swiss watch for the first time in 2 years. No more lean back fires and will travel the freeway speeds out here plus something with the A/C going as if it was a new car rather than something that is 34 years old. (Except for it's collection of rattles) Like I say, having a scan tool for these cars is the first order of trouble shooting. It may not tell you what you want to here but it tells you what is going on.
You are hearing a miss-fire and the scan tool says there is a code for a miss-fire, not what is causing it.
So it is not lying to you. And it tells you what cylinder it is.
My outdated Snap On scan tool which represents the state of the art technology for the early use of OBD-1 is far superior to the aprx $300.00 Scan tools I could buy over the counter and would have if the manufacture had not stated categorically that it would not work on my Saturn, which was one of the two reasons I was looking for one. The other being my retrofitted AMC car. And it turned out that car represented newer technology than the Saturn was. I was lucky enough to run across the situation where a prfessional mechanic friend had not bothered to up dat (at a grand a year or so) his professional tool and bought a new one and stuffed this one in a drawer. So he gave it to me.
I love it! It works (after repairs) on my 94 Saturn with it's weird pre-OBD-1 logic level computer and my AMC conversion and thinks it is a 94 Jeep Cherokee.
And if it ever acts up I will buy an autoparts store Scan tool for my 2007 Chrysler I bought new. Even spending that kind of money one use of it will pay for the expense of purchasing it. It is a good tool to have in our shade tree mechanic's tool box. Another one is a fuel pressure gauge which I never needed for working on carbureted cars but is indispensable on things with fuel injection.
Good Luck.

still getting a cyl 2 misfire now and again . i recently bought a new idle air control valve and it idles good now .
threw 2 cyl 2 misfire codes this week .
things i have tried

new plugs(a/c delco)
new wires
new ignition control unit(the one under the coils)
swapped coils to see if it follows coil(it did not)
plug and unplug engine management computer(silver box behind battery)just to clean the connecters
clean and reinstall plug number 2

i read somewhere that this could also be caused by a bad intake manifold gasket ,this true??
i am no saturn expert by far .been a ford guy mostly so saturn quirks are new to me .