I took the car out for a real test today instead of the 2.5 miles as I did before. The car ran well for the most part but would at times run rough; spark misfire or injector misfire, the engine would stutter. I drove it six miles to a fuel station and it did that several times; stutter and then smooth out. I though since the fuel was low that maybe condensation from sitting so long. Fill the tank to 3/4 full and it did the same on the way back home, stutter, run smooth, then stutter again.

I check the codes when I got back home and found code 17 (which does not light the CEL). I got a code 17 to show up once before as the tittle of this post shows but it went away.

I am wondering if the cheap coils or something else.

does anyone know how many driving cycles you have to go thru to restore i/m readiness after having evap system repaired and codes cleared. This is a 02 buick lasabre 3.8 v6

Please start your own thread with your question please. This is considered thread hijacking.

I checked with my mechanic in California; he is really super nice about helping me out, and he told me that the Code 17 is likely due to a bad crank sensor or a bad PCM. If you recall, I had removed the new crank sensor and installed the old one because someone told me that the new crank sensor might be the problem for the Code 18. Therefore, tomorrow I will pull the old crank sensor off and install the new one that I still have. I will post back here if that solves the problem of the Code 17; which I am sure is the problem since the old 19 year old sensor is back in place.

I wanted to finish up this thread about the code 17 that popped back in. I put the new crank position sensor back on but the code 17 stayed. Then code 18 popped back up again. This time I figured it was probably a misfire problem. I waited until dark and started the engine so I could check for any spark jumps and such. Dad taught me that trick; at night you can see sparks you can not see in the daylight. Sure enough, ignition wire number one had some strange things happening; I could see flashes along the insulation. I just put a good set of ignition wires on the car a couple of years ago. However, in this new age even so called "good" parts are made cheaply. I installed a set of Autolite wires on the car and the problem cleared up. I have driven the car a little over 40 miles and it appears to be running great consider the number of miles on the engine. Still have a little bit of valve clatter but with over 323K miles that is to be expected.

That sounds like some great news Kim. I had a similar issue a few years ago. Turned out to be a bad spark plug wire also.