CEL Flashing - Safe to drive or not so much?

[parasocks]

1999 2.3s. Started my car up today and my CEL is flashing. Also it seemed to be struggling a bit when I first pulled away. From there on, the car drove entirely normally on a short trip to pick my wife up from work.

Is this a don't drive my car until I get it fixed situation? I did some searches here and they say misfire/plugs/knock/coils perhaps. Replaced all my plugs quite a while ago, and I know they did the rears, and haven't had many issues.

Oh also, I'm at 155,000 km. Is it time to get my timing belt replaced while I'm getting this other stuff done?

[pawns17@yahoo.com]

My car was like this for 3 months straight. Me and my mechanic worked so hard to what was causing the problem. The car drove weak, and cell light was blinking. After the car picked up some speed it drove some what normal but you can feel that there is power lost. We finally checked every coil and every sparked plug and we got cyl. miss fire 2. We checked the sparkplug and the spark plug was brand new as if there was nothing going on in that cylinder. We checked the valve pressure, that was good we checked to see if there was spark, that was good then finally we checked the wires and one of the wire that connected in the coil was broken. I will recommend checking es all your electrical wires by your coils, coils, spark plugs, vacumm lines for leaks and also post the code for the miss fire.

[Saint_]

It will kill the cat converter if you continue driving. Before fixing drive only to the mechanic or if its absolutely necessary.

Sometimes they dont do the rears and tell you they did. And charge you as well. Happened to me!

Read the code and fix the spark plug or the coil.

I did the timing belt at 135k miles, first time. I would leave it for now.

[bigb]

you could just have a blown coil. like sait said, pull the code and only work on that cylinder until you know better what the problem is.

I would look at the plug and coil first, and if nothing is obvious then swap the coil pack with one from the front bank. if the code follows the swap, viola. you need a new coil pack.

you can get then easy enough from a junkyard. if you don't have access I can also hook you up.

believe it or not you better hope its the coil pack since it's probably cheaper / faster to just swap one out vs. doing the plugs

[parasocks]

Thanks everyone, interestingly, I had to take my wife to work and the CEL is solid again... Very strange. Maybe it was a hiccup? Car is driving absolutely normal too. I guess I'll get my codes cleared and see what pops back up?

[parasocks]

It was the #2 cylinder ignition coil. He said it was firing intermittently... out of the side?

Also put in 3 new spark plugs while he was inside.