So my buddy and I were driving over the pass today. In his 1997 Camaro 3.8L. Well this car has had some weird problems in the past where it would misfire on the number 6 cylinder. We were always able to replace the plug and wire and it would run fine. It happens about 3 times a year. Regardless, today on the pass he lost a lot of power and the engine light came on. We pulled over and I couldn't see anything but I saw a little smoke and smelt soemthing, but definately not oil. We limped it home and made it to the parts store. The code given was misfire on 6. Well we got a new plug and wire and replaced it thinking that it was out typical problem. But the lack of power was still there. I then told him (who knows nothing about cars) that it felt a little like a fuel filter, no power on accel or on hills, erradic shifting to compensate for lack of power, but ok at idle and cruising speeds. We replaced the filter and it still no luck. Visual inspection shows nothing. Oil looks good.

Most recent test was puzzling. I reved the engine up to just under 4000rpm and the car will drop 500rpm erradically and then go back up. I keep my foot as steady as possible and it just slowly increases till about 3900 and just drops 500. I've never seen this before.


I also want to add the weird, and probably not important, fact that just before this all started happening we drive past a forest fire and we were in some pretty smokey air for a while. I could not see how this would get the cleaner that fast, but I don't want to overlook anything.

Lastly, we've been working on this most this afternoon and our check engine light hasn't come on again, but we've only driven it a few minutes. Should we take her out for a longer run to see if we get a code?

 

Being that you changed wires and plugs several times, you may be worthwile to look at the coil for the #6 cylinder. Also may want to clean out the injectors and chack the wiring from the PCM to the #6 injector. Another possibility is that the ignition module is going bad, but that ususally produces multiple misfires codes.