Dropped a Cylinder, after start, goes away. Good one!

Heres a good one,
My Tacoma has 123k on it and it has aquired a new problem.

I was away and my GF was driving, it dropped a cylinder and was shaking badly. From 1500 miles away I decided I would do a little troubleshooting when I got home.

I got home, bought new plugs, drove it for 5 miles and shut it off. When I restarted it while warm, the problem happend. I was able to peddle it home and enroute it went away. I swapped out the plugs, which looked good, then I rotated the coils, and continued. A couple of days later it happened again, after a 50 mile ride and a stop. Once again I was able to peddle it back to normal.

During the event, it flashes the check engine light, after you rev it a bit and it sees a problem. It doesnt log a code everytime. It is a bit confusing.

In the middle of all this I blew out the muffler, so the skip and the loud exhaust in a hospital parking lot was not fun. I had a lot of dirty looks.

I dropped it off to a friend, told him the scenario, this time it logged a code on the way there. He scanned it and found it was the #4 cylinder again, so we know it was not a plug or coil issue. He pulled all of the injectors, cleaned the screens, replaced an o-ring on the #4 that was split, and put it back together with the nozzles rotated to see if the problem follows. He installed a new muffler and sent me on my way.

The ride home was interesting, got an engine light after 10 minutes, checked and cleared it with my new scangauge, it was the rear O2 sensor. It was just installed into a new pipe, so I figured it was disturbed and not happy. No skipping problem though.

Last night, I got it again, same scenario, it came back after a warm restart. Just a flashing light, no logged fault. Then it went back to normal. I need to make it happen and log a code to see if it moved, if it did, I have a bad injector. If not, then what could it be?

More to come!

 

No FF, just a screen in the tank.

I going out in a little bit to see if I can get it to log a fault.

 

My taco did this. Cylinder 2 shit the bed so I replaced plugs. That solved it for 2 days, than it would work fine cold but then run on 3 again once warmed up.

I replaced the ignition wires. Solved the problem. Check those and see if the insulation is ok. But I would recommend that.

 

Wow,
I looked for the filter in the wrong place I guess. Now I see it, with a Banjo fitting on the front end. Suppose I better change that too. I asked at 90k as to where it was, and the two people I asked said there wasnt one.

There are no Ignition Wires though, Its Coil on Plug, and I rotated all of the coils in the first attempt to t-shoot. The FF has probably been bypassing for years.

Thanks

 

Cali/Mass Emissions, unfortunately.