I love cars, Im part of various car communities on an array of platforms. Now the car scene has changed immensely over the past decade or two and to be completely honest.... it has gone sour. so many trolls and negative interaction, but what for? especially when people com in looking for genuine help and advice with their car issues.
This means i tend to steer clear of these forums as its just waaaayyyy too immature and it gets hella nasty real quick, but every now and again i see someone asking a question and im compelled to give em my some opinion and advice. this is one such case and their story dun dun !!!
Original Post
I have a 2001 Ford laser LXI KQ 4Door Manual.
I recently gotten the timing belt replaced, and other things needed to be replaced, my dad took it to a mechanic about a few months ago. Before that it was missing a bit and was very sluggish on changing the gears. The mechanic said it was a cracked head, funny thing is there was no sign of a cracked head. No coolant in the oil. No smoke coming out of the exhaust and not even overheating. So it's came back a lot worse, with the missing and hardly started the other night. Left it for about 10 days and it started straight away after the last time it took 6 times to start it. I'm so lost as I love my Larry the Laser that much I don't want another car. I have posted some videos of my car and what it has been doing. Really appreciate the help guys.
Response
I had a similar issue with another vehicle i owned, the "pah, pah, pah" kind of sound is similar on the exhaust side of the videos.... but ts hard to hear "properly" unless you are actually there.
Here what i did to diagnose mine:
Start car and get to temp
Once warm disconnect one coilpack/lead at a time
If the car bogs down a bit, reconnect and move on to the next one
If you find one which when you disconnect makes little to no difference thats the cylinder causing the missing.
Then its a matter of checking the spark plug, lead, injector etc. for what is not working properly for that specific cylinder.
Mine was a coil pack was on its way out and not firing properly, so upgraded the coil packs and job done
That being said, when peeps have car issues i usually ask "whats the last thing you did to the car before its started running like crud", you said it had a pretty big service... maybe the timing wasn't reset properly, maybe something is not connected vacuum lines sensors etc. that would be my first point of interest to be honest.