Allright i get a heavy engine vibe at 3500+ rpms when warm and heres the most recent update. Im pretty sure its nothing mechanical and my vibration/loss of power is due to it dropping a cylinder. For some reason the first time i put all new plugs in i put in ngk's and i just tonight went and switched them over to delco's. The delcos seem like theyre firing better but the problem seems worse with them in. At part throttle i hear an audible ticking/sputtering noise. I also think i broke a clamp or two for my exhaust by driving around a bunch with the vibration because it is shaking pretty heavily in the middle section.

All of this said this is what i have concluded (through various forms)
-Every cylinder is getting a spark
-The ticking noise (now noticeable with the new plugs) could be an exhaust leak due to the shaking of the exhaust creating one somewhere but hypothetically speaking if one of my injectors died and the cylinder was only getting spark and no fuel could you hear the ticking of the plug?
-If it is that i have a dead injector is there any way i could go about testing the injectors to figure out which one is dead. (i think if anything its the number 2 cylinder thats dead because me and my buddy went about pulling wires off of the dist. cap while the car was running and it was the only one that had no change in the way the engine ran when we pulled it)

So basically how do i check for a dead injector. Can anyone think of any other possible reasons for my problem based on the symptoms described.

 

do you have a haynes manual if you have to tear it down?

dunno how it is on the 5.7 but i looked at some cars at cookstown auto with the 3.1/2.8 motor, and you just take off the throttle body, and plenum to get at em
they have a few 3rd gens, 2 are burnt to the ground, 2 are pretty much stripped, and the rest are v6's. they arent in any order, just scattered about so finding them are a bugger.

is there any way he could blow air through the injector, maybe unclogging it?

 

..and if you dont have the haynes manual ill scan the section you need and email it

 

Your right for what i have to do if i want to remove them and i have the helm inc manual which has everything id ever need to know although thanx for the offer. I dont think its a matter of a clogged injector although i guess it could be but i believe that due to the electronics involved an injector can actually die so it wont spray fuel clogged or not. I was wondering if there is any way to test for that preferably with the injectors on the car so i dont have to worry about replacing gaskets.

 

If the injector isn't firing, you shouldn't hear anything in that cylinder. If you take a long screwdriver and put one end to the injector and the other to your ear, you can hear it ticking. Check each injector with an DVOM for current to make sure they are getting power. If there is power, take off the distributor and crank the engine. Look at the plugs. They should be wet.

 

Okay i didnt fully understand that so im going to try to piece it together. When me and my friend were trying to diagnose it to a specific cylinder we'd pull one wire off of the dist. cap and see if the engine idle changed. If it didnt then we found the cylinder. When you pull a wire though you get a ticking noise coming from the open point on the dist. cap. I'm 99% sure (ill never say 100% sure on anything) that all of my connections are good but when im driving at part throttle i hear something that sounds a lot like the noise i heard from the unplugged wire. If the plug was just firing into air is it concievable at all that i could hear that ticking coming from the cylinder?

As far as the screwdriver to the injector technique ill try that tommorow its too late right now and im going to bed. Does anyone have a more scientific method to testing it because if i try it and dont hear anything im not going to be convinced that i did it right. Does it matter where i touch the screw driver to the injector???

 

try pulling the wire off of the plug and see if the spark is going through the wire, maybe the wire is just bad?

 

How about you take the plug wire out and shove a new spark plug into it. Ground the thread end of the plug and see if it fires and what color of spark. You need to see a good blue color spark.

I would touch the screw driver onto the injector body. As to checking for voltage, ground one end of the DVOM and stick a pin into one of the injector wires and see if you get 12 V off and on. Do the other wire too.

Why don't you run the car and take out the #2 plug after running it for a bit. It should be fuel wet if the plug is not firing.

 

Just a thought , make sure you have the plug wires in the right order, its not hard to get two reversed.
Good luck, Dan

 

That's what I'm thinking also.

Although its pretty basic, *check* every wire, and verify that you do indeed, have them hooked up according to the firing order.

Sometimes an engine will run even though you have a couple wires on the wrong posts, and it can vibrate the engine as you describe.