OK back ground, I had issues with my stock exhaust coming apart at the seams near the rear flanges so I decided to just replace everything and went with a Off Road OBX system, Headers all the way back. I had the system installed yesterday and picked it up last night and this is where the trouble begins. Started up sounded great, drove about one mile didn’t notice anything cause the road is 25mph and bumpy so I was driving slow, get to 45 and here is where the fun starts....check engine light is on, car is jumpy driving down the road (i.e. engine is getting power/loosing power), car feels like it has no power whatsoever and even driving up a hill I have to down shift to 4th just to make it up while driving 55. I thought it was the spark plugs but when I got home I pulled them all and inspected the wires. I know that they had to extend the oxygen sensor wires to fit (an obvious issue with OBX systems) there is a lot of back fire when either shifting gears or just releasing the gas. I am about to just put the stock headers back on the car and hope that fixes some of the problems until I can get it in to have it tuned. Any recommendation that you have would be greatly appreciated.

I had all the work done at Tim Braham’s shop in Fayetteville NC, I called him this morning and am planning on bringing the car back to him but I have to trailer the car there I am not confident enough to drive the car back to him without doing any damage to it.

www.tcbworks.com

 

Did you have the car tuned after the headers and exhaust install?

 

Getting it back to the installer would be the way to go. In the mean time, have you checked for codes? There may be a ground not properly reconnected. Going back to the stock manifolds seems rather drastic.

 

I took the car back to them yesterday and they said it was a loose wire, I drove the car back to work and the check engine light came on again, currently the only codes on the car is P0300 Engine Misfire Detected, So this afternoon when I get home I am checking all the ingnition wires and spark plugs on the car. The Installers called and said to bring the car back to them, which I am going to do tomorrow, I am just nervous driving the car while this is happening. I have a tuner set up for the car but until its actually working properly I dont want to take it to the tuner until the initial problem is fixed. I know that it needs to be tuned after all this is done but the car should be drivable adding these things correct?

 

Very common to crack a plug with a header install....inspect them. Exactly which wire was loose?

 

Ignition coil wire #5 they said was like a 3/8ths of an inch off, last night I pulled the spark plug out of the #5 cylinder and check the spark plug but the plug seemed fine, I pulled the 1/3/5/7 plugs and check them all ad they all looked the exact same. I am going to pull the 2/4/6/8 plugs tonight and check them and I ordered new wires yesterday, the wires are suppose to arrive tonight so I can change all the wires also. Additionally before I had them actually do anything yesterday another code that appeard but is gone now was, P0161 Heated Oxygen Sensor (SO2) Heater Circuit bank 2 Sensor 2 was showing, now that one is no longer showing but my check engine light is still on.

 

OK all thanks for the great information, here is what I ended up doing and it fixed the problem. I ended up replacing all the spark plugs, the car is a 99 and only has 56000 miles on it so I figured what the hey its probably a good time to change them all out anyways, and when I took all the plugs out the only one that looked a little different then the rest was #2. After this I instlled MSD spark plug wires all the way around and cleared the codes, started the car and whala! no more codes...took the car for a test drive and everything seems to be working very good now....all I need is to have the car tuned and we will be in buisness.

I really appreciate everyones input to help guide me to the right solution.
R

 

That Lucky 131969, was right again! Glad you took care of the problem yourself. 56K & didn't put new plugs in on the header install ?