also, what are the causes and what are the possible results of an engine misfiring?

thnx

 

Engine misfiring is just that.. your plugs are misfiring when your pistons have compressed the air/fuel mixture. Usually associated with your timing being off, results are a shaky motor. The misfiring throws the whole motor out of balance.

 

when a spark plug doesn't fire when expected

 

wat causes it?

 

misfire is actually more general than that. the simple answer means that either the mixture detonated at the incorrect time, or didn't detonate at all. this can be caused by MANY things. too numerous to list, but a few are, low compression due to a compression leak from maybe bent valves, incorrectly gapped spark plugs, bad injectors, lean mixture, bad spark plugs, bad coil packs, bad ecu, low octane (less then 91) gas, bad batch of gas, etc, etc. You get the idea.


minimally it could merely be an annoying, slight loss of power, shaky idle, etc, or worse, it could cause damage to the car.

 

it's all about the timing....if any of the factors are not in sync.....then the precise timing of the combustion will be off. The farther off it gets it will start to knock and then misfire... Which is the purpose of the timing chain.

 

A bad timing chain tensioner could eventually cause a misfire?

 

yes....

 

if it misfires once and hasn't done it in awhile, do i still need to worry about it?

 

The cause of the misfire will determine if you need to be worried. If it's because of i.e. a coil pack, rotor or sparkplugs that's one thing... if it's because of bent valves thats another.

If you threw a CEL....pull the code and then go from there. Determine which cylinder is misfiring and troubleshoot to isolate the problem.

If you have no CEL and no code....then you have no problem.