I cleaned my engine the other day. I used barly any water. I did a mist and barely enought to have some due on the engine, then I used a old towel and elbow grease. Now today when im driving it started ilke bumping while i was going 30. Then the Check engine light started flashing. I looked in my manual and it says misfire. Will changing my spark plugs fix this problem? I cant image I got water in there, i used barely any water.

 

Missfire can be caused by anything from a bad plug, to a bad plug wire, to a bad coil. Was this the first time you've driven it since you washed it?

 

As soon as I was done drying it, i started up the engine and let it idle for about 5 minutes. Then I got in and drove down the freeway for a bit and thats when it started happening. The blinking check engine light was one for about about 15 seconds, then it went off and has been off ever since. Today it was running better, but not great.

I was looking at the plugs today and it seems they require a lot of work to change them. Not like the old trucks me and my dad used to work on.

 

I would think it is the plug itself, but rather 1 of 2 things ( don't know which you did not note the engine size in your post or sig, but I know you have a Billet fuel door ).

If you have COPs, you might have had water under the COP, or water in the back side of the connector causing the problem.

If you have coil packs, you might have gotten the wire caps full of water, causing the problem.

Hard guess, without knowing which engine you have, to know where to search.

Also, if you had access to a code reader ( or gone to AutoZone ) you could have found out which P30X number you were getting, to know which specific plug to look at, now it would be a hit or miss ( no pun ) to know which plug wire / COP to look at.

 

I have the 4.6L sorry bout that.

If I went to auto zone and used that thing, would it still work even if the light is not on anymore? It was flashing for about 15 seconds while on the freeway and then went off as soon as it came.

 

all 2000 and newer v8's have coil on plug so you won't have wires to deal with. it seems like the most obvious thing is water getting in somewhere so i would start with removing the coils and boots underneath and drying them all out. slopping a bunch of dielectric grease into the boots will prevent this from happening again.

i have heard of coils going bad from getting water on them. the best thing to do is go to autozone and get the codes read or you can also go to walmart and buy a cheap code reader. i think you get some for under $50 now that will read and erase codes. the codes will stay stored in the memory for up to 40 warm up cycles.

 

Most likely you just got some water in the plug wells. If you scan the computer it will tell you which cylinder is misfiring (yes the code should still be stored in there).

When you know which one is misfiring, you just need to blow out the plug well with some compressed air and let the COP dry out.

 

once I get the code read and find out what cylinder it is, how do I get the plug out???

I was looking very closely under the hood today and could not for the life of my figure out how to get the plugs out of this thing.

 

These trucks use a Coil-on-Plug ignition, which means there is a coil pack for each spark plug. Look near the fuel injectors, you will see some round black packs held down by a screw. Thats your coil pack. Remove that screw, and the coil pack can be removed. The plug is located down in the plug well. If you are lucky, one of the front plugs is misfiring, they are the easiest to get to.

 

If memory severs me correctly, use an 8mm socket to remove the bolt holding the COP down, and pull up, like it was an old school spark plug wire. Be careful not to jank like a mad man, and yank on the COP harness.

That will get you to the point of looking at the spark plug.

If you want to remove the plug, depending on which one, JMC posted a nice short cut that really speed up the process, with bleeding off the fuel pressure, and taking off the fuel rail, and loosening the power steering ( if it is that side ). This is a whole lot quicker then the extnesion - swivel - extension method some ( including myself did ).

If you search on his member name, and fuel rail, you should find the post from some time ago ( '03 ?? ).

I guess it really depends on which plug you are pulling if this is really needed, 1 or 2 come out without issue.