Misfire, Backfiring

was it ever in a flood? Could be electrical, or in the ecm

possible timing problem or perhaps a lack of back pressure from the exhaust system.

well i have one come into the garage that did that and it was the O2 sensor, i would of never thought that but it was. and cav are famous for the coils and ignition module so good luck

I just finished resolving a similar issue on my 95 Cavalier. It began misfiring and sputtering bad at idle and up to about 5mph then smoothed out as well. It went away for a day, then came back a few days later but even worse and sputtering occasionally throughout any speed or engine rpm it was at. It would break up so bad at around 45mph or so and I could not accelerate past about 50. It happened after I floored the pedal in an attempt to race a friend in their cavalier, but the car only sputtered and bogged down, moving nowhere. I found that the car was misfiring on cylinder 1 and was running rich because of it (determined this from the look of my spark plug in cyl 1, was dry fouled compared o the others which were fine). I replaced spark plugs and tried again, no difference. Replaced plug wires, no difference. I then replaced the COIL PACKS and went for a drive, car ran smooth and the problem was resolved. Took it on the highway up to 75, ran perfectly fine. For anyone wanting to attempt replacing their coil packs on the older cavaliers (95-97 maybe?), it is not fun. If your spark plug wires run behind the engine and under the intake manifold like mine did, you will have to remove your A/C compressor to gain hand access to the coil packs. Use a wide variety of extensions and a 7/32 socket to get the bolts off, it's tricky. DO NOT remove both coils at once, or you will have to blindly line up bolts and the plate the packs sit on to the bolt holes in the back of the block. Hope this helps, good luck

I bought a 93 cavalier and I had a bad injector leak after changing it putting new rings for the injector wasn’t the problem. We decompressed the fuel to get it out. But after changing the injector rings it almost ran like a fart firing machine gun misfiring. So we changed the injector it still was leaking. So changing it still little difference but drove it for a while all summer. And than fall hit it started doing the same misfire thing again sputtering no power. when trying to step on it no power let off a bit it gets more power brand new fuel pump can’t seeing that being the issue. going to change the coil pack next.