my car ran fine yesterday, then today , out of nowhere ,something suddenly is wrong. the engine started and was immediately rough, like it was misfiring. i thought i was low on gas, but a fill up had zero effect on performance.
so i headed over to auto-zone and asked them if they would come out and have a listen and tell me what they thought. the guesses ranged from dirty fuel filter to bad 0xygen sensor , fuel pressure regulator to dirty injectors .
so i bought a whole bunch of stuff and headed home to read the camry forum, first thing i found in search, is to check the engine idle by removing plug wires, one at a time,to analyze idle variances.
by starting the engine and unplug one spark plug at a time and listen for changes increases/noticeable rough idle.
number 1 plug wire removed caused increased /worse idle. but when i took the plug wire off the number 2 plug, the engine rough idle had zero change. and before i could remove the plug wire extension rod all the way,, i see it is sparking all over the place, when i checked closer, i see the extension section has a crack in the neck closest to where it contacts the spark plug itself.
so i tried wrapping black electrician tape around it. and it reduced the electrical blue sparking but the Bakelite or hard plastic was fractured.
so i went back to auto zone returned all the previous wrong items purchased and bought new plugs and a complete set of 7mm plug wires
new plug wire set also came with a brand new distributor cap.
i installed the new plugs after i set the gap at .044 and added never-seize to plug threads.
put on the new plug wires and distributor cap , and added one bottle of in-fuel tank injector cleaner . and cleaned the intake butterfly flap with spray carb-cleaner, and wiped out the tarnish build up.
it took a few turns of the key to get the engine started and idling.
then i took it for a test drive, and wow.
increased acceleration and smooth and quiet.
i know i am going to get better gas mileage. i can feel it in the way the car performs ,,,
then i checked air in the tires (needed only 3 lbs. in each )
and i am ready to go.

so far very happy with budget tune up.

 

Great job in finding the problem! Your MPG should improve and more power to.

 

just went through my first full tank of gas after tune up.
before my tune up i was getting 289 miles out of a tank of gas.
today , i got 325 miles out of my first tank of gas after tune up.
so far very happy with increased power and smooth engine performance

 

Great!