Gripenfelter

What are the symptoms of a bad coil on a 3.8L V6?

Its my wife's '97 GTP.

hawgs

The cylinders of that coil not firing...

Go buy a new coil and put it on and see if it fixes it. They're very easy to install. If it doesnt fix it return it.

Gripenfelter

My wife has a misfire in her car.

Can't track down which cylinder it is but it sounds like its skipping one cylinder.

hawgs

anyway you can gain access to Autotap? If its a bad coil pack shouldnt it will be missfiring more then just one cylinder?

Gripenfelter

Yes it should be 2 cylinders.

hawgs

Start the car and go plug by plug on the coil pack and unplug them. The one that you unplug and it makes no difference in the idle of the car is the one that is bad. Try moving one of the other coils onto this spot and plug everything back and see if its the same plug giving you problems. This will rule out the coil pack being the problem if so.

If it is still the same cylinder pull the spark plug out and look at it and see if it is fouled. If its fouled you have a lot bigger problems then just a messed up coil pack.

Amped96

If you have a haynes manual, it will tell you how to test the coil packs with a volt/ohm meter. My 3.8 went through a couple sets of wires and a couple coil packs before we just replaced everything with MSD stuff. 3.8s seem to eat some ignition products.

From my experience, a bad coil pack had the same symptoms as a burnt plug wire.

Gripenfelter

Misfire cured!

Was a bad coil.

Need4Camaro

I still need to heat sheath my wires...
I had a bad coil pack with only 1 cylendar misfiring (cylendar 5) replaced it and fixed the problem...

Rhettwnorris

what size mm did you use to take coil pack off? I have a 96 Camaro 3.8 and I can’t find anything that works on it. If it’s an odd ball socket, will anything else work to remove it?