Need y'all's help

[Saggy Aggie]

Hi guys, this is my first post here. I've always read this forum in the past to help me self diagnose what's going on with my car and have always been successful til now, so here I am posting asking for help.

Ill try to give as many details as possible.

So, the car is a 2007 bmw 328i w/ 77,000 miles.

ive done the majority of the maintenance on the car to this point, but admittedly nothing too big. well, about a month ago, I noticed the car was a little rough and my check engine light came. Got it checked at oreilly, and it came back as cylinder 4 misfire.

I bought all all new plugs and an ignition cool for #4. When I replaced the plugs, I noticed #4 was covered in oil, which I figured was my VCG leaking.

After we replacing the ignition coil and the plugs, it seemed to MOSTLY solve the problem. The car was running 90% better, not misfiring like before and only a very slight fluctuation in rpms when idling.

So I figured the VCG was no good and would eventually cause the new coil to go bad again, so I ordered one. After a couple weeks of the car running okay but not perfect, slightly rough idle, I had time to replace the VCG.

Yesterday, I got the alive cover off and replaced the gasket. Put everything back together and cranked up the car. Seemed to be running just fine. I drove it home (approx 60 miles) with no problems. I woke up this morning and drove it to work, no problems.

When I I was leaving work today, I cranked up my car and it started just fine. After about 2/3 seconds, it started shaking somewhat violently and was nearly dying without even being in gear. I tried to rev the engine some and the car was still struggling. Check engine light came on. I called my gf to bring me some tools and when she got there, I asked her to steer the car while I pushed it into the garage in case it rained. Well, there was somewhat of a hill that we couldn't get it over and so I had no choice but to put it in gear and try and drive it a couple feet despite the god awful shaking.

As as soon as I drove it a couple feet, it seemingly fixed itself. Went back to it's drivable self with only a very slight roughness in the idle (700-800 rpm change maybe) and the check engine light turned off.

I decided to drive it home and post on here and that's where I'm at.

Any idea what's going on or what happened and why it somewhat fixed itself? I'm thinking maybe a vacuum hose? Idk... It's not leaking oil either, which is what would happen if I hadn't put the VCG on correctly, right?

I can can tell that the car is not 100% yet but it's a hell of a lot better than it was. Thanks for any help or insight you guys can offer.

[SpeedsterBek]

get the check engine codes and post it

[Avec]

Did you clean the oil out of the spark plug wells? Sounds like they are shorting.

[Saggy Aggie]

Did you clean the oil out of the spark plug wells? Sounds like they are shorting.

Yeah, I cleaned out #4 since it was the only one with oil in the well.

The CEL isn't on any more, can I get a history of previous codes by going to oreilly or autozone? I thought they could only pull active codes

[montaillou]

Well, some code readers only read active codes, but some read the entire history and anytime the light comes on an entry is made.