The ICM receives a signal from the crank sensor and it creates a fuel control signal which it sends to the PCM. You checked the wiring? I'd through an ICM in it. They do weird things.

The ECM almost always loses a driver and it won't be sporadic.

I did a wiggle test and moved the harnesses around from the ICM but didn't ohm out any circuits. It was almost dark when we went to get the coil from the parts car and i realized I could take a pic of the parts car ICM connector to use for a reference for the color coding of the wires. I just don't understand why the code reader is saying misfire on 2&5 while there is no spark at 1&4 and the code reader is showing no misfire. Maybe is there is mo power to the coil, it wont show a misfire?

Are you sure you are checking the correct cylinders? Don't go by the numbers stamped on the coils. They can be switched around. At least I think I remember that correctly. Does that ICM have three coils or one?

yes i am using this diagram and yes 3 coils. The coils on my sons car does not have the numbers on them but the parts car coils do. Nothing changes when I unplug cylinder 1 and 4 injector. No spark on coil 1&4. I can hear injector 1 and 4 clicking so the injectors are operating.

also looks almost identical to this pic with what I believe to be the ECM just to the left of the coils and the ICM is under the coils

Given that you have a PCM just sitting there in the parts car, it may be worth a shot to try swapping them out. OBD 1.5 PCMs for the 3800 do fail on occasion, and when they do, the symptoms are often intermittent and very confusing.

Ok Rjolly87, We are going to try to swap the PCM. The parts car is a 94 regal limited and my sons is a custom. They both have the same engine and transmission so I would guess they use the same PCM?

Do you just remove it and swap them out? I have read something about swapping the e-prom which I know little about.

Here what we have done since I last posted. We took his ICM and the ICM from the parts car to 2 different parts stores to have them tested but neither had the adapter. It turned out that the ICM and coils were under warranty from AZ and so we swapped them out. That solved the direct miss we were having. It was still showing random momentary misfires bouncing around to different cylinders at the idle speed of 675 rpm'*. when we turn the AC on and the rpm'* bump up to 738, the random misfires go away.

So my impulsive son jump in the car and pickup a friend and they drive around 100 miles and then just after sitting in a long wait drive through, the check engine light came on.. He said he drove about a mile, parked, cut the engine off, and restarted the engine. The check engine light was gone. When he got home we checked the codes and it was showing a P0325.
When I look up online, P0325 most often comes up as knock sensor failure but our Actron CP9145 code reader indicates the code is a electronic spark control failure ECS.

Also the code reader was showing a constant misfire on cylinder 4. We pulled the injector plug off of the #4 injector and the engine bogged down. We used a noid light on injector #4 and it was a constant steady flash.

Next I connected my timing light, it has the inductive clamp,(think that is what it is called),, it works nothing like on my 88 ford! the light was very rapid and at times uneven. When I connected to cylinder 6 which hardly ever shows a misfire, it appeared to be steady and fast while #4 was all over the place along with the other cylinders.
I read something about not being able to use timing light to set the timing like i can on my old ford.

So what are you guys suggestions from here?
Anything special we need to do when swapping out the PCM? When we changed out the ICM, we used thermal paste so it should not be overheating.
Being aftermarket parts, whats the chances the new ICM is bad?
If I am correct the ESC is built into the ICM?

thanks
Anne

The modules have numbers if they match you are definitely good.

The two cars may be optioned differently, which can cause issues sometimes when swapping PCMs. The internet suggests that swapping the PROM from the old PCM to the new one (under an accessible panel on the PCM), but other sources suggest programming may be required. There shouldn't be any harm in a plug and pray approach. It will either work or it won't, and it should give you some data to start with anyway.

Timing is completely controlled by the computer. Usually timing is checked with cylinder 1, which, in this case, should fire the exact same time as #1, because it fires each coil, which in turn, sparks two cylinders (and twice as often). I think there is a loop that can be removed somewhere to force the car to revert to base timing, which you can then verify with the timing light, but otherwise, the computer is constantly messing with timing advance to maintain efficiency. Knowing that 1/4 fire together, this can help you identify the culprit through a game of swapping plug terminals, coils, etc. If the timing light isn't reading spark right on one cylinder, but not the others, it may be ignition related.

Regarding the P0325, I would treat it as a knock sensor failure. We have a '95 Blazer that throws the code (in OBD 1 form) and we know that it is caused by a lack of ground from the knock sensor (It'* not grounding to the block right, it'* not where it belongs, it'* a long story). The Actron just has the code named weird. Given it hasn't returned, I would file it under a fluke and wait for it to come back. Knock sensor connects to the PCM, which applies Knock Retard in response to multiple events. No separate ignition control outside of the ICM. ICM handles spark timing below 400rpm, which the PCM then takes over at that point.

As of the last post, it seems as though the car is behaving more sensibly, so I would be inclined to hold off on messing with a PCM swap at the moment. The old ICM may have had more issues than I originally thought.