cwmoore

Hello everyone and Happy New Year. My son drives a 2001 Lexus ES300 and it needed some bodywork. Nothing mechanical was touched, except maybe unplugging the headlight and fog light to replace the front bumper and then plugging them back in.

The car was at the body shop for 10 days and when we picked it up, the check engine light and trac off light are on. We pulled the codes (I misplaced the numbers) and 2 of them showed up. One was a miscellaneous piston misfire and the other was a misfire of piston 2. So, some of the recommendations are to change the spark plugs or coil packs, which seems like a tougher job with the pistons at the back of the engine.

So, before we try this, any thoughts on something simpler to check? I have read some posts and could it have to do with variable valve timing?

cwmoore

Did some online research, so I started car this morning to try a few things and the lights were off. Let the car run for a goo 10 minutes, turn off and turned back on...lights were still off.

Could be that the care was sitting too long at body shop and just needed to run for awhile.

So, for now...problem has gone away. Have a great weekend everyone!

LeX2K

Could be the body shop disconnected the battery which cleared any pending codes. Engine runs for a bit codes come back, they may go away for good or crop up later due to something being marginal.

Hopefully the problem won't come back.

tomf

Piston 2 is toward the front of the car. # 2 is the first one on the passenger side on a US car. Easy to change that coil. Switch the #2 coil with one of the other ones. If the misfire follows the coil you know the coil is bad.

GSROMEO