so tonight I was looking at the cam synchronize stuff. While there I decided to pull a plug to check (new truck, havent done this yet). It looked pretty wide on the gap but I accidently popped the #1 and #2 wires off. I get out my book to figure which goes where and find this:






I have re looked at this several times and not making sense out of it. According to what I see, the firing order is WAY off. #1/2 on the coil pack should go into cylinder #1/2 of the motor. But its such that coil pack #5 is going to cylinder #2 and coil pack #6 is going to cylinder #1. Is this even possible for it to run? I bought this truck back in march, but never thought to check the firing order????? Or am I missing something big here. I checked my 99 3.0 and its normal.

 

Am I seeing things or is the #1 plug wire going to going to #4 coil pack ???? or am I confused too ?????

 

It's known as the "wasted spark" principal. While #2 fires on the compression stroke, at the same time, #5 fires on exhaust (thus #5 spark is wasted). Kind of the same as a single cylinder lawn mower, those fire on the exhaust stroke too.

 

yep, #cyl1 is hooked to #coil4

 

im familiar with the fact the 4 cylinders use waste spark systems. Dont think I knew the 3.0s did. So if I get it, the cylinder gets fully fired 2x and as long as the wire is hooked to the proper cylinder or the cylinder 180 out it will make no difference?

 

Correct, each cylinder fires on both the compression and exhaust stroke. It's kind of like three separate coils running 6 cylinders. You could swap the plug wires for #2 with #5 and it would still run. Same with #3 and #6 as well as #1 and #4.

 

ok, that explains a lot. Thanks for the replies!

 

let me also ask this, why would someone do this? Its clearly deliberate, are there valid reasons and do I even need to bother putting it back right?