see basic maintainence is what it came down to

 

He had a dead hole and NO CEL ? That's a first, never heard of that happening. It's about impossible with these misfire monitors.

 

Exact same thing happened to me a couple years ago with 84k, but it would only happen after being parked out in the rain. #3 misfire, no CEL, no codes. Coil pack fixed it, after replacing plugs and wires with NO fix. Tech had to take a ride with me with his magic box hooked up to the OBD2 port to even see it was #3 that was barfing.

To the rest of you, he was not dissing tarajerame, he was THANKING him for asking pertinent questions.

 

When I read wgrimsley's post the first thing I thought was that a coil is bad.

I have a 5.4l and it has lost three COPs in three different occasions (#6, #7 and #3). Each time it would have the exact same symptoms that wgrimsley described. Slight stumble and loss of power when going up an incline with light to moderate pedal, but it would clear up if I floored it. All other conditions it would run fine. No CEL or codes!

After the first time and the symptoms returned, I knew it was a COP but with No CEL or codes I could not tell which COP was the culprit. After a couple of times keeping it in that stumble mode, finally the CEL would Light up, but it would only flash several times then go out until the next time i went up a hill. Finally the CEL would stay on so I could get the code to see which coil was out.

Lastly wgrimsley, if you had started your post with the description that you gave in post #10 you would have had more favorable responses from the beginning and less joking around!

Food for thought!