Missing on 2 cylinders

[chevy64454]

I have a 2000 cavalier 2.2L. It suddenly began missing cylinders 1 and 4. I have ignition, fuel and compression, but it just won't level out. Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated.

[kris]

How did you check the ignition and fuel? Compression numbers?

[MagicRat]

I am not sure about your specific car, but many GM cars use one ignition coil for two cylinders, meaning that if one coil goes, 2 cylinders go down, but the engine will still run.... badly.

[vgames33]

The cavalier does use two coils.

[curtis73]

I'm guessing its the coil. It can make visible spark, but just because you can see it doesn't mean its enough to fire the fuel.

You can test coils with an ohmmeter. Check with a tech manual for your car, but to give you an idea you can start by testing both coils and seeing if they're different. I would also try swapping coils to see if the misfire moves to 2 and 3. If so, you know its the coil

[UncleBob]

with a DIS ignition setup such as this, the return path for the coil is from one coil post to the other coil post. What this means is, if you have a very bad connection, open circuit etc for either cylinder, you can cause misfires on both cylinders, even though only one cylinder has an obvious problem electrically

Could be a coil of course, but don't jump to that conclusion because you have misfires on both cylinders

[534BC]

1 and 4 are at ends, right? Is there any sharing of intake,carb bore, ect? it could be something common to both cylinders as well as the ignition components.