Recently I borrowed my friend’s Ford F-150 pickup truck so that I could deliver some firewood to another friend. Finding a good time to swing over and get the truck from my friend was half the job, but once I made the time, and was on the road back to my place, the truck started bucking and thumping pretty badly, so I pulled over to the side of the road to check things out.
Upon initial inspection I could only guess that because of the rough idling, and lack of power that the engine was randomly misfiring on at least two cylinders. It seemed to get worse when you put it into gear, and then got really bad when you put a load on the engine. Testing things out under the hood I discovered that holding the rpm up to about 2200 would cause the engine to smooth out enough to get it on down the road. how often to change spark plugs.
So I limped the truck back to my house where I put my “Auto X Ray 1000” engine code reader onto the computer, and started testing the failure codes. These code readers used to be quite expensive, but have come down in price, and there are a wide variety available now. Some of these have code data built in only for a specific manufacturer, others will connect to multiple platforms, and these will cost a bit more. I feel that since these have become more affordable, they are a great tool for the do it yourself car person, but you can still use one at the larger parts stores, or borrow one from a friend who has one, problem being you have to get the car to the reader, or find someone to drive you to get the code reader since your car is broken. truck spark plugs.
They usually have a plug or a cable that can plug into the computer communication port on your car or truck, and with this device, you get to see exactly what is happening under the hood. This is particularly useful when things go wrong like that! After connecting the code reader for less than five minutes on the Ford F-150 5.4 liter V8 engine, the code reader showed me that cylinder # 7 and # 8 were randomly misfire.