[Phil Hill]

Joe, Blackbir2001.

Rather than pulling the coil demand wires it would be far easier to pull demand wires off injectors. Same effect, it would knock out a good cylinder, but no effect on an "dead" one.

Having replaced some cheap "regular" plugs with the correct Platinum tipped ones my feeling is that the pick-up and responsiveness of the engine improved no end.

Butterfly plate would have to be *really* dirty to cause that much problem, although Idle Air Control Valve (IACV) could be causing poor idle. It's a stepper motor actuated valve under the butterflys in the throttle body. It could well be cacked up with oily gunge as the crank-case ventilation air/oil vapour is drawn back into the air intake upstream of the butterflies.

This wouldn't necessarily cause poor performance. There could be air leaks. Have you checked all the connections from air-filter housing and MAF meter, up the rubber hose to the throttle body, throttle body to inlet mani, and inlet mani to cylinder heads ?? Could try a "squirt" test with some light oil, see if it gets drawn into the manifold by vacuum.

I would be more concerned with the white smoke. Does it smell of fuel, I mean really smell strongly of fuel ?? This could indicate multiple plugs/coils shut down and simply not burning the fuel. If it doesn't smell strongly of fuel is it seriously hot ?? Scaulding hot, like steam ?? Could be a head-gasket type problem.

I really don't know how you would get a compression tester/leak-down tester in there to check..............