1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera with 2.8L fuel injected engine and auto tranny. i've had this car for a little over a year now as a daily driver of about 30 miles/day and decided it needed a little TLC with the oil change that was due. changed the oil yesterday and went to napa website and found the correct spark plugs, wires and distributor cap for the make/model/engine i have. picked the items up and installed them this afternoon and the car ran normally. before the work the car ran pretty good for me with the occasional stall (once every few days at most) whether hot or cold engine; figured this was a minor idling issue. after the work the engine is missing and the car stalls pretty much anytime i slow down for a turn unless i keep one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake to keep the rpm's up. starts ok but will stall if i don't keep the rpm's up. i found the firing order on the autozone website and confirmed that i have the plug wires on the correct posts on the distributor cap. also noticed that my "service engine soon" light pops on after a mile or so of driving and stays on. and now the cruise control won't engage; i've never had an issue with it before. i'm about 40 minutes away from the nearest parts store so i'd like to try to figure this out without making that trip, plus my weekend is now over and i need to go to work for the next 5 days and don't want to drive the car in it's current condition. thanks in advance for all advice and suggestions, please help me out!

 

I think you can use a paper clip to get the code causing the check engine light. I want to say it's pins A and B under the dash that you jump across, and the engine light will flash the code in long ans short flashes. Google it to be sure of the pins, it's been a while since I've done it that way.

In the meantime, check all the obvious stuff: Both ends of each plug wire for tightness, reverify that the wire routing is correct, no wires melted to the manifold. It is possible that you got a bad spark plug, try swapping them one at a time with one of the old ones. While you have them out, check the gaps, they can be bad from the factory.

Could you have knocked a sensor connector loose while doing all the work? Could one plug have backed itself out and is now loose?

 

i spent some more time under the hood and found one vacuum hose totally off of its connection and another hose that had either been beat up by me or had just worn out. either way it was in pretty bad shape with some good splits running down the sides so i got it replaced and the other one i knocked off put back on.
i did some google work and found out how to get the check engine code with a paper clip (you were right pins 1 and 2 - thanks for that info!!) and found out it was a 32. this code is: EGR vacuum switch was closed during start-up or idle, or EGR vacuum switch did not close when EGR solenoid was commanded to close by ECM for 5 seconds.
i don't know what the EGR vacuum switch is but with the help of some autozone.com searching i figured out what the solenoid is and the one bad hose i replaced was connected right below it. i disconnected my neg cable on the battery for about 30 seconds to clear the code then went for a drive. i drove about 15 minutes with no check engine light so i think i've got all the vacuum issues taken care of. tomorrow will be the best test since i have to drive about 20 minutes each way to work.
the main issue now is that the engine is still a little rough. not as bad as before i got the vacuum hoses back in place but she still likes to stall out when slowing to a stop. it will idle better now but is still rough and it will still die sometimes. i'm debating whether i should use one of my old spark plug wires to try to find if i have a bad new one, was also thinking about doing the same thing with an old plug. basically my plan was to swap the new ones out one at a time with an old one and go for a short drive to see if there is a difference. this will be pretty time consuming and was hoping there would be an easier way to find out if there was a plug misfiring and which one? thanks for the help to all.

 

We used to use a cheap plastic pen to find bad plugs when I worked on airplane engines some years ago (I'm an aircraft mechanic). We would start with a cold engine, run it about 5 minutes, then quickly touch each header with the plastic end of the pen. The cylinders with good plugs would melt the pen, the one with a bad plug would be cool enough that the pen would not melt. This might work on your engine if the misfire is bad enough.
Also, you may be able to tell just by removing the plugs and looking at them. The one that has been misfiring would be different than the rest.

 

i went to autozone yesterday and bought an ignition rotor (p/n DR923), ignition coil (p/n C846) and a pick up coil (p/n DR132). installed the ignition rotor and coil and pulled all of the plugs and plug wires back off to inspect them and check the gaps on the plugs. the wires are ok, no melted areas at least; i don't have a multimeter handy or i would check the wire resistance. the plugs weren't fouled, the gaps were good at .045, and none of the porcelain was cracked.
i couldn't get the pick up coil changed because i couldn't get the original one out. i dont know how to pull the shaft out that the pick up coil sits around, i did a google search but the one hit i found that was related to my situation said that i just had to pull the shaft out up and out. i did some tugging on it and it really ain't budging so i gave up on the pick up coil until i get my haynes manual. ordered one the other day online but it hasn't shown up in the mail yet.
so basically all i've done today is the ignition coil and rotor and checked the plugs and wires. reinstalled everything and now the damn engine wont start! it turns over and over but wont fire. i swapped back to the original ignition coil and rotor and double checked my firing order and tried again. no start!
i'm guessing i have an issue with the distributor now but don't know how to figure it out. any suggestions or ideas would be most appreciated. thanks!

 

I think I got the same problem now and like you, I am suspecting that it was on the distributor. Did you already fixed your car?? If you do please tell me what you did to fix this problem? I need the car this weekend and I don't think I can use it in this condition.. Thanks..

 

yep i got mine fixed after many hours of cussin and kickin it.
my problem ended up being the pick up coil that's around the distributor. you have to pull the distributor out to get the coil changed so it's not too fun.
find TDC as discussed before and mark your distributor to the engine to make sure you get the distributor back into the exact same spot and you should be ok. the distributor rotates a little as it comes up so thats normal, once you get it out you will see the threads that cause this. i was told that if you dont get it back into the exact same thread when you're putting it back then you'll retard your timing so make sure you mark it well. i used a scribe to scratch the manifold and one point on the distributor.
i got a bunch of help from a member named wayne on the automotive.com forum; if you find my thread there you can see what i did step by step. it's really too much for me to relist here. if you need to feel free to email me and i'll send you a link to the discussion over there.
good luck!!

 

I know that this is an old thread but I am hoping to revive it! I recently bought what I thought was a pristine 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera GT. Beautiful car with only 34,000 original miles on it but everything is now going haywire with this car and I am really frustrated. I had a major tune up done by local very reputable guys. The car ran ok before the tune up so I figured it would be sweet afterwards. However the day after the tune up the car began misfiring and it has been a problem ever since. My mechanics spent a lot of time trying to figure out the problem but haven't solved it. I replaced all 3 ignition coils and that helped a great deal but it still misfires at low speeds, around 15,000 rpm. It seems fine once I get it up to speed. Strangely, it seems to run better on rainy days. I like to tinker so I want some advice on what to tinker with. The speedometer also just stopped working, the "need maintenance" light came on when the speedometer died. My mechanics said they cannot find the electronic part that they need to fix the speedometer. Cruise control also does not work.