Originally Posted by keninn

you wasted your money on the ecm(pcm). if you go to the other forums, you will not see any posts about a bad pcm, but you will see a whole bunch of posts about plugs, and coils. also, NEVER accept what someone says the codes were, you should get WHAT code it was, not what they say the code was for. case in point, when our black car got it's first codes, it was 0170/73, scanned at autozone. they interpreted it as the mas. second was o2 sensors. what it actually was, a broke tee, so it was running lean. again, if you check the other forums, you will see a LOT of posts about broke tees/vacuum lines associated with the 0170/73, but no one fixing those codes with mas or o2 sensors.
also, and you will find this out, the pcm is a bitch to change. it is behind the radio, but in such a posiltion that the harness is really difficult to unplug. be prepared to remove the side panels of the console to gain access to the harness connectors, and even then it will test your mettle. i would first change plugs/swap coils, and clean the wells. here is a trick i have done that works very well. when you have the plug out, clean the well. i like brake cleaner for this, it dries with no residue. the inside of the well has to be squeaky clean. with your finger, you can feel the groove where the valve cover gasket is. take some good silicon sealant, and rub it all around where the gasket is. i like hylomar for this, but any sealant that is oil and hi heat will work. i have done this to both cars, and no more oil in the wells.
a miss on #6 would throw a p0306 code, not 0300. again, you should find out what codes were thrown, not the interpretation. and, afaik, the ngk 3741 is the only plug that comes with the proper gap. beware of any plug with a -11 after the part number of the plug. for example, the old number for the 3741 is PZFR5F. however, there is also PZFR5F-11, which is used on some acuras and bmw. the -11 means 1.1mm gap
a general rule of thumb, is to attack the lower number codes first, sometimes fixing the lower number codes will also fix other codes. this is very true on the 2.3. i would bet that the right bank plugs are original, and long overdue

Originally Posted by santa6

The coils were new.

Originally Posted by santa6

Kennin, finally got the new plugs. Pulled the front 3 to replace and they looked like the engine had been running rich. Replaced them with the new plugs. Then went to back side and pulled plug #1 - It was complete clean, like it just came out of the box. Then I remembered, when we were putting the previous set of plugs in(the Autolites) we broke a wire on the p0lug that plugs into the coil - this was also the new coil to address the P0301 code. IBasically we had pulled the black wire with the white stripe out of the connector. I pushed it back in carefully and checked continuity with ohm gage by piercing this B/W wire on on the wire side and contacting the corresponding tab in the plug on the other side - we got continuity so I figured the wire would work okay and we were very careful when we reassembled. But now, seeing that it looks like this plug, with a brand new coil, was not firing at all - which could partially explain the rough running - I'm wondering if I now need to replace the harness. Can't reall see a way to solder a repair. So some questions:

Is there a way to repair this connector?
Should we replace the harness?
Is it one harness for all 6 cylinders or is it one for front/one for back?
Where to these wires connect on the other end - is there a distributor of some sort?

Thanks