I have had this same problem for over a year now, and have replaced coil, plugs, and wires to no avail. But today...I think I have solved the problem.
I pulled the wire to the MAF sensor, on the recommendation of a friend and wise technician, on the suggestion that the mixture patterns that are learned by the car may be skewed if the MAF has gone bad. This can lean-out the mixture at lower RPMs and richen the mixture at higher RPMs. This seemed to explain my low RPM missing and hesitation, as well as my sub-par fuel economy around town. I don't pretend to understand how the stuff works, but it made sense to me.
Anyway, went to my car this morning and unplugged the MAF (this is supposed to default to a preset mixture program based on RPMs, not on the learned behavior). It worked! No more hesitation. So, I am going to try to clean out the MAF tonight. If that doesn't work, I'll pick up a new one.
Hope this helps!
PS: This also explains why the problem went away temorarily every time I worked on my car. Disconnecting the battery clears the memory for the mixture program. After a short while, the car would learn the bad mixture patterns again, and start the problem up again.
Last edited by wgharper; 10/23/02 06:45 PM.
