Alright to start things off, my engine has been misfiring lately and it's driving me crazy. The car is hardly drive-able in it's current state because it's a struggle to keep up with traffic especially when having to jump on the freeway. This is what happens:

-Weird idle, RPM's jump from 600-700 and you can hear a low backfire in the exhaust.
-When accelerating the engine will "choke" or "stutter" like it's fighting to accelerate. It accelerates VERY slowly.
---- During both of the above, the car is shaking.

The CEL IS NOT on. Sometimes it flashes and I happened to catch it and was able to run the code and it came back with a cylinder 1 misfire code. Today, I replaced cylinder 1's spark plug AND switched the coil from cylinder 1 to cylinder 5, that way if the CEL came back on and the misfire code followed the coil it would be easier to trouble shoot. In cylinder 5 there is oil leaking from something, probably the valve cover. The leak is bad enough that it is now on my plenum.

I have done all the resets possible and for some reason the problems will totally go away, then after driving the car more and more the same problems reoccur. I believe this is because after the ECU gets enough misfire codes it finally falls into the same state as before. My Y-pipe has a tear if that makes any difference, and before anyone asks, yes I use 93 octane.

What could possibly be wrong? Please help! Thanks

 

Did you do anything to the car right before you began to experience this issue?

 

Nope, pretty much just out of the blue. I haven't done any mods recently.

 

Pull your plugs and see what they look like. Your spark plug tube seals might be shot.

 

Plugs seemed okay... Could it be a bad fuel pump? I have no idea and I don't want to spend a boat load of money trying to fix every possible problem it could be. And work/school schedule aren't exactly "work on car" friendly unfortunately

 

sounds like a coil pack.

 

Do a compression test.