so recently it seems my engine had been running a little rough. nothing terrible just kinda annoying lol. it runs rough at idle and i can feel the steering wheel rumble a bit when accelerating and driving and decelerating. i had a routine oil change thinking it would help and it didnt. any ideas as to what the problem is? my alignment is ok as the car drives straight and handles well.

i did a tune up in like may of last year and have put around 14,000 on the car since. used NGk wires, NGK platinum plugs, duralast cap and rotor. i was thinking about trying new plugs to see if it would help. any suggestions. copper? iridium? NGK or denso? i hear denso's iridiums are good.

and help is appreciated thanks

 

NGK Pt plugs are good, so with only 14k miles on them I'd expect they are OK. Look elsewhere for the problem. But if you take them out, inspect them closely. Somewhere on NGK.com there's a nice set of photographs of plugs, showing what they look like for different types of engine problems.

Dirty gunk in the throttlebody? Clean with FI cleaner & rags/toothbrush or something like that.

Measure compression?

Distributor getting old & flaky so your spark timing is inconsistent? Got a timing light to check that?

 

yeah i was planning on checking the plugs but ive just heard that iridiums run better. ill look at them anyway and see. i ran some seafoam sunday and it seemed to help but it also caused some heavy missing until it blew it out quite a bit. cleaned the tb this past fall and had compression done in august when timing belt was done, 195, 200, 205, 195 were the readings if i remember.

whats the timing light and how does it work? where can i get one? how much?

 

It's like a strobe flashlight; use it to measure your spark timing. Clip it to the battery terminals to provide power. Clip the other wire around the #1 spark plug wire. Engine warmed up & idling. Shine it onto the timing marks (on the crankshaft pulley) to check the spark timing. It'll have instructions.

Get it from just about ANY car-parts store. Or Sears. Maybe $40.

 

ok thanks i talked to my dad and he actually has one so im in good shape. he also has a compression tester so im gonna do that again.

could this also be an EGR problem? the car likes to start kinda sloppy and rough and it has to creep it way to normal idle. one other thing i forgot to mention.