• September 11, 2015
• By: Steve

I was chasing a problem with surging and stuttering in my 96 Cobra. It was setting no codes and idles perfectly. I noticed it most in third, fourth and fifth gears at 1800 rpms when you are accelerating. It would struggle and stutter a bit when under load. I cleaned the MAF and replaced the fuel filter but there was no change.  The IMRCs seemed to be opening at the right time to me. I was thinking one of the coil packs is weak but I tested it with an ohm meter to verify it was spot on.  Not wanting to throw parts at it, I took it to Gary at Automotive Service Solutions and had them put it on their scope.  They found the coils were fine but cylinder 1 had a light misfire and wasn’t enough to set a code.  It’s funny what will and won’t set a code on a car.  They swapped in a different test spark plug wire and the problem went away.  I ended up paying the diag fee and ordered a set of stock Motorcraft 8mm wires from RockAuto.com for a very good price.

I am happy to report that after replacing the plug wires the car is back to running correctly again.  The wires fit well and the only thing I didn’t like about them was that they were not numbered for each cylinder like the originals were.  Other than that, they are nice.  I didn’t even break any of the spark plug wire retainers.  I finished off shop time by throwing a coat of wax on the car just because I was bored and was having a good time listening to Hair Nation on Sirius XM Radio.