I believe I'm experiencing misfire when cruising down the highway and trying to accelerate faster while putting down load on the engine. With that said, is there a way to diagnose for misfires when revving the engine while at a standstill? I have a scangauge tool attached to my obd2 plug but there are no codes. Was hoping for a diagnostic tool that showed real-time data for each cylinder (i.e. graphs & numbers). TIA

 

Probably not. Such "mild misfires" occur only under certain loading conditions, like a slight uphill at 40-50 mph with the transmission in overdrive and then applying light throttle.
Torque Pro with a BT/WiFi OBDII adapter will do that. You just have to set up a screen of customer digital gauges for the cylinder misfire counters. Note that these counters are maintained on a per-drive basis. If shut off the engine, the data is erased from that drive cycle.
Codes will only set when the rate of detected misfires exceeds a calibrated threshold.

These misfires usually occur due to a COP that is breaking down internally, a COP boot that is leaking high voltage to ground (carbon tracking, cracked, etc), or a failing spark plug. If you just want to repair the misfire for the time being, plan on having a plug and a COP on hand. If you want to do a full tuneup at the same time, add the other spark plugs, new boots for them, and have that one COP on hand. I will note that, on my V10, I had two COPs fail at the same time. The misfire counters will point you to the cylinder(s) of immediate concern.

 

THanks @projectSHO89 for your reply!

Yea, I could say these are mild misfires that I'm experiencing. By "COP" do you mean Coil Over Plug (boot)? I had changed the spark plugs back in Aug 2018 but kept pretty much everything else the same (Coil packs, boots). Prior to changing the plugs there were noticeable misfires and some ODB codes to boot. Since then these mild misfires have been noticeable lately. Are you suggesting to replace the boots or possibly the coil over packs.

 

You should have replaced the boots and springs when you changed the plugs. At this point, it's likely that you may need one or more coils. Recommend only Motorcraft, Denso, or Delphi coils. Boot brand not critical if just replacing the boots and springs.

 

I'm not a snob when it comes to buying COPS. I just used the inexpensive ones that RockAuto sold for around $15 each 5-6 years ago when I last had this issue. Still running fine. My philosophy is to only replaced COPS that are demonstrated to be bad. Some guys will just replace them all. I've still got factory originals still in my 01 V10 at over 180k

Ditto on the boots as glc commented. They're wear items and should be replaced with the plugs. Put a bit of dielectric grease in each boot when you install them.

 

Thanks for the advice. I bought the truck used with about 190k. I had put dielectric grease when reinstalling the original COPS & boots after replacing the plugs. I'll go ahead and replace them all since it could be time anyways :-)

 

Note that new coils come with boots and springs, you don't have to buy them separately.