I got my first Lima yesterday, and the used car shark sold it because he says it is dead on one cylinder. His exact words were "Sometimes when I move the wires around, it will run a little bit better."

Nice, well, Let's start correcting this dead cylinder by getting the firing order correct.

This would be a 1991 XLT.
All of the diagrams I have found (and all of the Limas I have ever looked at), have the coil packs next to each other on the left/passenger side of the engine. My engine has a coil pack on each side of the engine.

This being the case, is the firing order still the same? And in the diagrams showing the coil packs next to each other, does the "bottom" coil pack represent the left or right side ignition wires?

To move ahead, once I am certain the plug wires are in their correct positions, if I still have a misfire, what should be my next step? He swears the engine hasn't jumped time, but I can check that. Crank position sensor? Bad coil? Whats more likely to fail? Being a waste spark system, and that it only seems to be dead on one cylinder, I'm tending to rule out the coils.

 

No replies yet, but Ill add my update.

Dove under the hood today. Took one of the diagrams I found, and assumed the front coil pack to be the one for the right/driver side plugs, and the rear coil pack to be the one for the passenger side. Discovered that, indeed, the used car shark had just been moving plug wires around.

Passenger side coil is connected properly. Went to ensure proper order on the driver side, and found wires in the wrong location. #1 and #4. Naturally, #1 came right off the spark plug. #4 wire pulled out of the boot, leaving it on top of the plug. Seems like no amount of coaxing or cursing will get this thing to let go of the plug!

Fortunately, I have a new set of wires I ordered at work coming in on Monday or Tuesday. I just hope I can get this boot off of the plug without having to pull the intake. Anyone have any tricks to get a stuck boot off of the #4 plug without removing the intake?

 

I going to move the exhaust side wires that are fully intact to the intake side tomorrow, provided I can get that #4 boot and connector off the plug. It should fire normally with the exhaust coil and wires disconnected, as best as I can tell.

Should be able to get this Lima running normally. Any input?