2003 Toyota Matrix Cylinder 3 Misfire Diagnosis & Recommended Repairs

hello friend how is it going welcome back to Toyota maintenance YouTube channel afterday in my shop this cute little Toyota Matrix it's a 2003 and it has super high miles 296,000 and the reason it came to me to my shop today is because apparently it's not running perfectly and it may have misfires so when it came I saw it had a pretty high idle and also there was a check engine light on so I grabed my little scanner scan the computer and there was a code p0303 which is misfire on the cylinder number three I erased the code it didn't come immediately back while the engine was running so the next was open the hood and start investigation here I first remove this beauty cover that piece of plastic and it's held by two 10 mm nuts and I attached my light here and it became obvious it's baby was in service recently and it was also confirmed apparently this vehicle is in the family since new but what's the problem is that every single member of the family is borrowing it so it may be driven for a while then it sits you can see it here on the paint that's why I'm sharing all these details there's a bunch of moss and uh grow on it you can see it all over here so we can see immediately our evaluation together is not much of the maintenance and we have a heavy oil leaks look that oil [Music] everywhere so just looking at that Val cover it's obvious to us that the oil is leaking from the Val cover gaset failer and it's all over it's on the front it's on the sides it's behind it's everywhere obviously to evaluate the misfire number three I started removing all the coils and this is what I found I always put my marks on them so one two three and four and when they were sitting there in the engine they looked definitely not original there's no way and there are Toyota Deno USA so it's a good part they looked recent if I can say that but I start seeing the oil on them and you can see there's a little bit of oil on this one despite the fact I already cleaned that as I took it out with a rack but it's still coming from inside however number three 1 2 three and four number three was completely flooded and sitting in the oil approximately up to here so the coils were here in the bench wiped off so will probably leak oil for a long time do you see that it's just coming from there I that will need a heavy cleaning cuz it was flooded so high I started pulling The Spar plugs they were correct iridium Deno sk16 R11 it's not a problem on the model but this one the number three right one two and three is not sitting here because it was completely soaked and swimming in the oil this Spar plug wrench which you can see was up to here absolutely full of oil so it will be also cleaning from inside so I don't contaminate the new ones and so on this one completely guys flooded in the tube it was up to here so it was absolutely crazy now evaluate any misfires you are looking for everything and now I would like to bring up your attention not to the type of The Spar plug but to The Spar plug tips and I will try to do my magic with zooming so you can see what is happening on those tips I hope this dark background will help me to show it so what I see with my eye the tips the gap it's ginormous and I call this hook that u shaped tip or hook that burned off the material of that metal is missing uhhuh let's see more so the space between the point and the hook is at least double it's all burnt off the m The Reel is gone this is a number two all of them are burnt uh this is the number four maybe that's the worst one I'm not sure how do you see it is it visible completely burnt the material is gone here is the number three which was soaked the Gap guys it's at least double than it should be it's a 1.1 1 mm set by the factory it's probably two 22 or 2 mm so double now so that's a problem already and that could cause uh misfires but we have another problem normally this four cylinder engine doesn't have any problems from the factory it's a model 1 zzf but I'm assuming due to the high miles I can see that it burns oil why am I saying it cuz look at the white ashes on those tips call that white ashes not only the tips are being burned off but you see the presence of white ashes which tells you that there is excessive oil burning look at it and everything all of it obviously could cause the misfires but it should be all over if it was because the tips are burned there will be multiple misfires but we have specifically on a number three but it kind of makes sense because in the number one tube the coil was almost dry number two almost dry number three absolutely flooded all the way it was sitting in the the oil was sitting halfway up and number four was basically kind of clean the oil was present all over here and it is because that V cover gasket tube it's a spar plug tube tube seal failed and it's leaking down there in the tube between the Val cover and the tube is a rubber gasket which Harden it's old and it's leaking now this engine leaks a lot look for example here can you see in the back how shiny it is there well that's because it's full of oil everything is oily I'm trying my best to show it to you you it's heavy heavy oil leak as we discussed the situation for the vehicle it's not good because it's being shared by multiple people and then nobody knows who will take care of it correct so it end up in this shape and it's okay and because of this we have to or I have to offer to the owner Val cover gasket job which means it's the gasket which goes around the valve cover all the way plus those seals in every single cylinder so that's our main problem definitely I visually check the viring harness on number three there seems to be no damage to it it just will need a cleaning everything I have to use the electric clean spray because you see that oil all over that could negatively always negatively affect the electric current and so on but you can see here how bad it is another detail uh the serpentine belt heavy cracks it's a very extreme cracking so I will be recommended that also as a minimal work it should be done what is my recommendation the very minimum work for this old high mileage vehicle it's absolutely clear that that oil leag has to be stopped so it's a valve cover gasket and Tube seals job these Spar plugs as I try to show them to you the condition unusable they are done it's absolute miracle that they were not multiple misfires on the engine and it's focused just on the number three cylinder now seeing that these coils look very recent as a part I will not go and replace all four of them because they are very expensive I will just go with Spar plugs only for now obviously the engine needs immediately engine oil and filter change and also as a minimum service I'm going to recommend to the owners of this vehicle to replace that serpentine belt which runs everything I hope many of you will find this video helpful in the future if you do please give it thumb up and stay tuned I have way more coming your way soon thank you for watching and have a great day my friend