I wanna start by saying hi. I hate my first post being a question, but I really need some help here.

Recently I bought a 2005 Outlander 2.0 4WD (4G63) for dirt cheap as a winter beater. A few simple mechanical issues and what I thought to be a dead coil(From what the pervious owner had described to me). Little did I know that the coil was neither dead nor causing the issue.

Long story short, my car runs like ****, I get intermittent misfires and the occational CEL that reads out as a misfire on Cylinder 1 during acceleration. (I once had a misfire on cyl 4 and twice had a code indicating a bad coolant sensor). Sometimes it will not rev at all, sometimes it jerks and sometimes it revs really slowly. And every now and then it has a few seconds of running perfectly. My issue is primarily during acceleration, idle is normal though a little unstable from time to time. Running at a constant rpm and speed is not an issue. The car also uses quite a lot of fuel, over 13liters/km. Which leads me to believe the pump and filter are working as intended(Although giving the car way too much fuel). It starts without any issues.

Here's what I tried:
- 2 sets of coils.
- 2 sets of plugs. Gapped to 1mm and 1.1mm. Neither the old nor new show any cylinders running lean or rich
- 2 sets of spark plug wires
- Replaced the coolant temp sensor(Readings from the OBD shows the temp. correctly)
- Checked compression, all four are at +/- 5 of 200 psi
- Checked exhaust for any overheating parts, even tried driving without it.
- Checked all injectors for continious ticking(They do at idle, not testet during acceleration)
- All injectors show between 13-14ohms of restiance and are fed with 12v of power through the harness.
- Tried higher quality fuel (98octane) and hard driving when engine is warm (It might have improved it by a tiny bit, but the issue still stands)
- New air filter (The old one was litterally black)
- Checked the TPS through OBD - It appears to be working according to the readings
- Checked MAF through OBD - It seems a little slow and random, but the amount of air does follow revs and trhottle position somewhat
- Car runs without MAF connected but if I disconnect the TPS it will not rev higher than 1500-2000
- New battery and checked the alternator

My next step is just to get a MAF and throw it in the car to see if it changes anything at all. Then remove and clean the injectors. After that, I have no clue what to look for. Any tips?

 

After some more troubleshooting, I narrowed it down and fixed the problem. Long story short, the fuel was dirty as hell due to a rusted out filler neck.

Went to check fuel pressure and the fuel that came out of the fuel rail was full of water and sand. Drained the tank, cleaned the pump, cleaned the filter and cleaned the injectors. Runs as it should now, and it uses a lot less duel. Time to fix the other issues with it.