Last night I was driving the car for about 15 minutes and everything felt perfectly fine. Randomly I felt 2 or 3 sputters just before the check engine light began to blink and then remained on. At that point the engine began to run rough and I lost most engine power, I had to crawl in 1st gear until I was able to get to a decent spot to pull over. The car runs rough at idle and sounds like it wants to stall but doesn't, almost as if the ECU slowed the timing or it is not running on all cylinders.

My initial though was moisture in the fuel tank caused the ECU to freak and delay timing (the temperature in PA dropped from about 45 to 16 degrees in a day so I think condensation caused moisture to build up in the fuel tank). When attempting to start the car again today I noticed the DSC light is lit up on the dash and will not turn off with the toggle switch.

As of now I am not sure what it is, I know I can have the code read but I will not have a chance to get it to a shop for a few days so I was wondering if anyone on here has had a similar issue or has any ideas of what it could be/how to remedy the issue.

It is a 2003 MCS with ~48,000 miles on it.

Thanks
Chris

 

Sounds like a plain old misfire. Could be a bad spark plug, wire or coil pack. Reading the codes in the ECM should help diagnose it.

 

Yea that's what I am thinking at this point. I have the stock coil pack and wires so I will try replacing those to see if that remedies the issue. If not the plugs will be the next place I check.

 

Just wanted to give an update to anyone that is interested. After some diagnostics I found the coil pack shorted out and caused a short in the ECU leading to a misfire on 2 cylinders (1 and 4). I was running an aftermarket coil pack (MSD) so I am going to attempt to contact them with hopes for some sort of resolve, although I am not very confident that anything will come out of it. I just don't believe there should be any reason for a coil pack to short out when used under normal intended conditions so I feel MSD should be held accountable for something in this situation.