A lesson learned.

[ORRadtech]

Not specifically Mustang related but I thought I'd share.
Had a road trip last week. We took the Edge because women pack a lot of crap for a week at the beach and we took the dogs with us.
Anyway, two thirds of the way I get a check engine light and a heavy misfire under load. I immediately suspect a coil pack has failed. Why you ask? Because a month ago I had one fail on the rear most bank. So I changed all three back there because the intake has to come off. I didn't change the front because they are super easy to get to and no code for them.
Now I'm a little old school so I always pack a small emergency kit of basic tools, a jump pack and a small inflator whenever we travel.
The lesson I have learned is to include in that emergency kit a code reading device of some sort.
I know that an auto parts store will read the codes, but when you are traveling it can be difficult to find someplace locally and stressful with a misbehaving vehicle.

Fortunately, I was able to get to our destination and I borrowed a friend's scan tool. I replaced the #6 coil pack and it was back to normal. But I thought to myself, how dumb is it to travel with tools and not have the ability to communicate with the car?

I now have a little scan tool as part of my emergency kit.

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[compprep]

I thought the lesson was going to be, "Should have changed ALL the coil packs"!

 

[ORRadtech]

I thought the lesson was going to be, "Should have changed ALL the coil packs"!

Well, that certainly would have saved me some irritation.
But at the time there was no indication of them being a problem. And it's literally a 5 minute job to replace one. The back three are about a two hour job so I did all of them "while I was there".

 

[ralph7]

I thought the lesson was going to be, "Should have changed ALL the coil packs"!

And I thought the lesson was going to be to carry a spare coil pack.

 

[Cobra Jet]

<snip> but when you are traveling it can be difficult to find someplace locally and stressful with a misbehaving vehicle.
<snip>£
But I thought to myself, how dumb is it to travel with tools and not have the ability to communicate with the car?
<snip>

You communicate with the car the good old fashioned way - you give it a swift kick in the tire and yell “damn you, ?@&$! worthless POS bucket of bolts!!!” and proceed to throw your tools and anything else in your hands across the parking lot….

 

[ORRadtech]

You communicate with the car the good old fashioned way - you give it a swift kick in the tire and yell “damn you, ?@&$! worthless POS bucket of bolts!!!” and proceed to throw your tools and anything else in your hands across the parking lot….

Wouldn't be the first time...

 

[CrazyHippie]

And I thought the lesson was going to be to carry a spare coil pack.

It's a GREAT idea to carry a spare coil pack. True Story: I took my son fishing in Sitka Alaska. my buddy had owned a 1950's vintage boat that he sold to a local guy for a great price plus a few years of summer use. We were using this boat. It had a single V-8 on-board engine plus an outboard trolling motor. The trolling motor had some water in the gas and wasn't running well. We were about 19 miles from the marina in Sitka Sound when the main engine failed to start. We were literally adrift without power. After about an hour of work on the motor and a few very sketchy calls to the boat owner, we determined that the distributor cap was broken, was arcing, and that fried the coil. But the owner had a spare on board and we were able to get it running and safely finished the day.

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