The reason I ask is because recently my car hasn't felt as torquey as it usually does and it doesn't seem to have much muscle recently. I was driving home from out of town (2 hr drive) and as I was almost home I hammered it and got to about 120...is that bad after you've been driving for 2 hrs? My engine's temp was normal for driving. Oh, I hope I didn't damage anything but it just doesn't have the spunk recently. Anyway, I was wondering if this happens when a cylinder stops working or something.

 

does your car have a governor?

 

listen to your exhaust to see if you here it, i can notice the difference when my plug wires burn, and i can really notice the power decrease

 

If you really wanna know then just pull one of your plug wires and drive around the block. That's what I did when I was learning

 

Hard to believe you wouldn't notice a missing cylinder, but since you have a 97, you can get a count of misfires, by cylinder, with the correct scan software.

 

would Freescen do it???

 

Yeah you would know if you had a dead cylinder.
Have you done a tune up recently?

 

I bet it's the opti...

 

Not on a 96/97 OBD-II. FreeScan is only for OBD-I as far as I know. OBD-I does not include miss detection.

For OBD-II scanning software, consider AutoTap, Auterra and several others that are available. Some hardware and software scanners are listed here. I think a few of the links are not working already, but the basic info is there.

 

I just went through this same problem right after my header install. Turns out the #8 plug was loose and then after I fixed that the next day I found a burnt wire. What really helped was the scanner I bought at Auto Zone (pricey yes but worth it). Not only did the SES light help tell me there was a problem but idle was very rough and the loss of power was extreme. With SLP Headers and Loud Mouth it sounded pretty crappy too

Thank goodness I had a set of MSD wires in the garage waiting to be installed and a reason to finally install them

 

What do I listen for?

 

Take your car out on the road in 5th or 6th gear, or OD in an automatic. If you're missing a cylinder, it should pretty much shake your teeth loose from the vibration. Should be obvious.

Dave

 

If you weren't running on all 8, you would feel it long before you would hear anything.

LPEdave just suggested what I was going to.

 

It will also backfire from the extra fuel dumping into the manifolds/headers.

I took my car out after the cam install and the #6 plug wire fell off and you couldnt really tell since I thought it was the cam, but then I took it up to about 3000rpm and POW flames came out the muffler. Im sure the neighbors loved that one at 2am.

 

well it was just last week when i burned another plug wire, i could here something like air coming from the exhaust, you can notice it, or i had a mechanic check mine out one time and he unplugged each injector until he found the cylinder not firing, if you miss the plug that aint firing, you can hear you car getting quieter, but how i really noticed mine was when i drove it, it shook and sounded really crappy