She was making a Subaru sound

Well the last two weeks we have been getting rather warm and wet weather, instead of the snow and ice you would expect this time of year. I went out to go start my car and the horrible noise she made was enough to cause certain organs to shrivel up and hide. It was an unmistakeable sound of only four cylinders firing. Of course I freaked out, thinking "oh sh$t! She's dying!" and shut her down. After a few minutes I decided to fire her up again, of course same sad sound, lots of smoke, but this time the CEL was lit so I plugged in the code reader and found p0130, p0300, p0306, p0303. After some forum searching I decided it was probably bad coils and plugs, and all the moisture had probably fouled some of them. So I ordered six coil packs, and went out and got some plugs. Two days later the coil packs arrived and I spent the afternoon and night under the car. I thought changing the spark plugs on my old Boxster was a pain, but the 996 was even more so. I read some people doing it without removing the mufflers, and I just don't see how you can do it without having some Ant Man like abilities to shrink your hands. I didn't remove the rear bumper as that seemed like overkill even though some have said it is necessary. Once the cans were out of the way it was much easier to access everything, still not what I would call a really easy job though. I didn't find any cracks or issues with the old coil packs but for spark plug number one I did see a few drops of oil in the tube. All the plugs looked old and tired and some looked pretty cooked. Being worried about the the couple drops of oil I saw in one of the tubes I went ahead and ordered new ones. But they would take several days to get to me so I installed the new plugs and coil packs, buttoned it all up, and fired her up. Of course the sound was great without the exhausts (very race car ) and no more Subaru sound. Put the cans back on and drover around with no problems and no codes being thrown. All in all, while a pain in the butt (literally, the garage floor was cold as hell and sitting on it for hours sort of like sitting on an ice throne) it was another bonding experience with the car. I can't reccomend enough just taking the mufflers off if you have to do this job. Just remove the three nuts from the muffler mounting bracket that faces the engine, and the loosen the two on the clamps in the back. A little wiggling and she comes out and gives you much more space and visibility. Now just need to make sure everything else is in good working order before I load her up and set off for California again next week to find a new job. Spending a few months unemployed back home with family has been great, but the money is running out and I miss my California sunshine and canyon roads!

Glad to hear you got her sorted. I have a 3.6 Legacy as my Winter wheels and I often listen for a "Porsche" sound from the Subaru boxer!

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Thanks! Definitely good winter wheels! And I'll bet it does make a Porsche sound with the new 718s!

Just in case you do this again, drop the engine down on the mounts, its pretty easy to get to most of it then and yep no need to remove the exhaust.

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Thanks for the tip! I had never even considered doing that

I used large pieces of cardboard to work on the floor in the winter. Helps a lot with the cold concrete. I've changed the plugs/coils on a stock mufflered 996 and it a tight fit but can be done with the right combination of tools.