Convertiblau! My 1996 BMW 328iC

[Jake]

Mileage: 114,770

It's had a bit of a stumble for a thousand miles or so, but very very slight. The CEL has been lit since I bought it for P1188 which is a generic emissions code. My drive to work today was a-okay, but starting the car when leaving work revealed a huge misfire. I limped it home (8 miles) and pulled the codes - misfire on cylinder 2 and injector circuit malfunction, cylinder 2.

My first thought is always plugs, coils, valve cover gasket. I know the previous owner replaced the VCG but he also did some other really shoddy work, so I trust nothing I've heard. Anyway. Pulled the coils and plugs. All coils were dry with no sign of an oil leak into the plug well. I replaced the plugs with known good NGK's (spares from a DJ's old racecar) since I had them out.

Cleared the codes, revved it a bit, the only one that came back was P0202 for the injector on cyl. 2.

OK, pull the fuel rail. The injector for cyl. 2 was not really secured by the black metal clip very well. I pulled the injector and re-seated it firmly, made sure the metal clip was in place and also reseated the electrical connection at that injector.

Same code is still there. It seems to idle better (less shaky/stumbly) but when you rev it, it's clearly misfiring.

I can check the wiring inside the plastic tube on top of the fuel rail, but didn't know if this could also be the sign of a dead injector or something else.

I think my next course of action is going to be swapping injectors 1 and 2 to see if the code follows the injector or stays at #2.