So I swapped out my spark plug wires three days ago.. I took it for a quick test spin to make sure it was running okay, and it starting riding rough. I took it back to the driveway, let it cool off, and checked and sure enough a boot fell off the spark plug. So I replaced it, and everything was running hunky dory.

Two days ago I was leaving a friend's house, and it started running rough again. I checked all the wires, and they were all on the plugs, then I noticed that the wire to cylinder 8 was burnt. So I took it back to autozone and they replaced it (lifetime warranty) and put it on. Started the car, it was still running rough. I stopped for the night, pissed off, and I had a final the next day. I took my final, came home, and checked out what was going on. So -- I look around and two more plug wires had like chunks missing out of them, kidna screwy, whatever. The damage to the wires didn't look significant, but I figured that was the problem. Took it back to autozone, they were out of wires, went to another autozone, and they replaced the whole set of wires (the other store refused to give me the only two wires I needed).

Pull the whole other set off, get the whole new set, took my time with everything, used most of the factory looms to make sure.. and now when I go to crank the car. It isn't even turning over. It sounds a lot like when the wire to my ignition coil went bad -- but this is a brand new ignition coil wire, along with all of the rest of them. I made sure that all of the rest of the wires were on snug, and all that other jazz.

It'll crank, and then there is a loud kinda harsh screech-like noise. It could possibly be starter, but wouldn't it not crank at all if it was the starter?

bah.. i'm frustrated. This is rediculous for a damn spark plug wire swap

thanks for any help in advance..

-Joe Blazina
jblazina@ufl.edu

 

It sounds like you may have another problem as well as plug wires. I figured i would share my experience with autozone wires. When i first got my car i put new autozone plug wires on the car and it ran fine. I then decided to add the new autozone coil wire. When i put it on the car barely started and idled at like 450 rpms. So i swapped back in my factory coil wire and it ran great again. I just chocked that one up to junk autozone stuff.

 

The coil is an OE Replacement from Pep Boys (Borg Warner I believe). I did that about 2 months ago.

I originally had the autozone set because I had to replace the coil wire. I was just bored a couple days ago and decided to swap them all out, because there wasn't much going on (i had no idea this would be a 3 day affair). The coil wire I was originally using got traded in with the other set.

I checked the coil wire and replaced it with a random plug wire from the factor wires just to see if it'd work. And it still didn't work.

I just got off the phone with my friend, and he said it could possibly be opti. I don't/hope not, simple because the car ran earlier today on the crappy wires. Should I just go see if I can swap for another set of autozone wires?

 

Did you remove the starter when you began this adventure?

 

No --

BUT, I did go back to autozone and got the wire set that worked on it before, and jus swapped out the two wires that I knew were bad. I got under the car, and did the plug wires like lightning (considering I've done them close to 9 times in the past 3 days). Car cranked up, and its running good now.

Seriously, never buying OE Replacement stuff from Autozone again.