About 8 months ago my engine light came on, and after pulling the code it was a misfire in cylinder 4. My vehicle is a 2004 Mazda MPV, and only has 60K miles on it. Everyone I talked to was skeptical that with so low of miles the spark plugs would be bad, so I just went ahead and replaced the ignition coil. Even though it looked OK, I replaced the spark plug in that cylinder anyway. To recap, I replaced the ignition coil, and plug in cylinder 4. Everything was great.
Fast forward to yesterday, and the engine light came on again. I expected it would be another misfire, and I would need to replace the ignition coil in another cylinder. To my surprise the problem is in cylinder 4 again.
Now, unless I happened to get a bad part, I assume the ignition coil is good. I pulled the plug that only has 5K miles on it, and it looks OK except the tip is slightly white. .
I know if the tip is black/wet/oily it is sign of something else, but what about white? Usually brown means everything is OK, right?
question 1 Is this small amount of white normal with a plug with only a few thousand miles on it, or is an injector bad or something?
question 2 Assuming my coil, and plug are good, what are some other things I can look at that will be causing this misfire?