cylinder 4 misfire?!
 

Hi all,

I recently bought a handheld scanner to check my engine management light. What a bargain, £30 instead of paying kwik fit the same for one scan! Anyway, i digress....

It came back saying that i had a cylinder 4 misfire. I turned it off as i hadnt noticed a misfire, and it has now come on. still cant hear it misfiring, but im not sure that i would.

Is there a quick fix, or is it a garage job?

Many thanks in advance!

Bumpety bump chaps 1.8 gurus?

Cylinder 4 misfire
 

What type of scanner is it and can it clear the fault code.you often get a fault code registered when you get a minor blip in a circuit.When you clear the code you run up the engine to see if it returns,if not should be nothing to worry about.

Reading the original post It seems the OP has cleared the fault and it has returned. Culprits on 1.8 tend to be plug, ht leads or coil pack. As it is only 1 cyl it is unlikely to be the coil pack. So really your left with plug and lead :). ( unless a 1.8 boffin tells us different :))

stick a set of new spark plugs in her first ,if still showing then change both coil packs .when ticking over is there a very slight drop.in the tick over . the scanner you got dont sound that good as it would give up the problem .. when i found my engine to have a slight misfire my guys used theire hand held one the showed the actual fault .mind you it did cost them £2000

also it could just be a loose plug ,and as stocktake says it could be a ht lead,and for a scanner at £30 i would of thought they was read only scanners .

change over the two coil packs two bolts on top on the engine undeer the black cover.to see if missfire move to cly 1 or 2.
if it dose you will need a new coil pack.

two coil packs with one lead going from each to the plug next to it,

i had a k4 engine and it developed a miss fire. it was the coil pack as stated, but im surprised you cant tell if it is miss firing or not. normally, if you listen to the exhaust, you can hear it 'stuttering' and will get an a slight difference in the amount of gas coming out. also, under hard acceleration the car was much slower and could feel and hear the engine missing. even though it was a smaller car, you would get similar symptoms, especially through exhaust.
try changing packs over first as kevin has said

I would have thought that an engine with a misfire and giving 25% less power would be very obvious are you sure it is doing this or are the electronics lying to you, its all sent to try us you know.The engine will be rocking around a fair bit if it is misfiring.

I once had a transit van that would misfire on tickover but was ok when running eventually traced it to a crack in one of the exhaust valves.

thanks for the responses.

I think the first thing i will do is change the spark plug. Bit of a noob at this, can anyone direct me where to find them and how to remove them? Any recommendations on the type or where to go to get them?