I have a 99 Honda Civic EX. It has an aftermarket ignition system from MSD. I have the 6A MSD Ignition with external blaster coil (Mounted near fuel filter) and Power Cap on distributor. Approximately 3 weeks ago, the car would hesitate when I would shift early into 3rd or 4th gear at around 1,500 RPM. The car hesitated worse when the accelerator was floored in the higher gears at lower RPM. I did not get a Check Engine Light (CEL) for 3 weeks. The hesitation started to occur only a few times and slowly its started to happen enough that i finally got a CEL and code to come up! I got the P0302-misfire on cylinder 2. I got this code to come up by slowly pressing the brake while in a higher gear at 2,000 RPM which caused the CEL to blink and finally stay on.

I inspected the spark plugs which only had 2,000 miles. They were the E3 spark plugs. They looked corroded and had some slight carbon deposit.

I checked the spark plug wire resistance and got 50 ohms on all four wires.
I checked the compression and all four cylinders had 100 psig.
I removed the old fuel filter and replaced with new. Old fuel filter leaked dark colored gas onto white towel.

I inspected the Power CAP and rotor and found corrosion (green deposits) on the contact points of the cap points and rotor blade. I also found a few of the wires that plug into the ICM that are routed back to the MSD 6A were making contact with the rotor. Also those wires and connections were corroded. I replaced the connection and electrical taped and made sure the wires would not come into contact.

I replaced the E3 Spark Plugs with Bosch 2 point and the hesitation problem has gone away. I did not replace any of the sensors since the cost ranges from $90.00 to 200.00 Per sensor. I will never buy E3 spark plugs again.

Has anyone else had a problem with faulty spark plug that causes the hesitation on low rpm with engine load?

 

A few people have reported problems with plugs having multiple side electrodes. Really the $2.00 stock NGKs are the way to go, just realize they are going to wear out and need to be replaced after 30,000 miles or so.

Also there doesn't seem to be much reason to install a mod coil, etc. The stock ignition is quite strong and perfectly adequate for any N/A setup.