My 2011 Scion xD with 141k miles had a cylinder three misfire a few weeks ago. I replaced the ignition coils and fuel injectors which worked to clear the code and the car ran swimmingly. That is until yesterday when I put the key in the ignition, turned it to ON (not turning over the car), and the Scion greeted me with a loud “pop” like a small firecracker and began billowing out white smoke from the air cleaner box. After waiting five mins, I tried to start it again and it will crank, start, then die instantly. I can’t find anything online about this after using five different search engines. TIA for any Help you can give me!
UPDATE: the mechanic I took it to simply replaced the spark plugs and it’s been running and starting perfectly fine since. The old plugs were pretty dirty but not wet or fouled out. I can’t fathom why such a simple thing made my car so wacky, but now I know— if you replace the coils, may as well do spark plugs too!
If you were getting smoke out of the intake you could have skipped time or burned a valve. I'd do a compression test before anything else to verify the internal condition of the engine.
The old plugs were pretty dirty but not wet or fouled out
Good to hear you found the problem. Obviously, old plugs can cause misfires. https://carkiller.com/scottykilmer/howto/misfire-4/#post-53676
