The symptom you describe and the switching of the plugs indicate that the fuel accumulater is probably bad. When you switch the plugs you will flood the engine if you don't either switch the plugs back immediatly or shut the engine down. The test is just meant to start, not run the motor. The ticking noise could be a leaking exhaust gasket or even a loose intake or exhaust valve. If it is time to replace the oxygen sensor then it is also time to adjust the valves anyway so you may fix the noise that way! There have been a few cases where replacing the 20 + year old ignition coil resulted in a noticeable improvement, they don't last forever but they don't seem to fail outright very often. David Teitelbaum vin 10757 --- In dmcnews@xxxx, DMCVegas@xxxx wrote: > Recently I've been having a problem with hard starting with the D > when hot. If the engine is cold it will turn over almost > effortlessly. But when hot, it has difficulty starting. If I swap out > plugs to force the cold start valve to fire the engine will start, >