check engine light blinks

[Pineapple]

ok so i own an 04 ford ranger xlt 4.0 recently when driving down the highway the check engine light would start blinking. worried i let off the gas and slowed down after a bit the light turned off. today it did the same thing only it started to shift poorly and and run terrible after a few scary minutes the light turned too solid and it began to run smooth. im going to have the codes pulled tomorrow but i was just wondering if you guys had any ideas on this.

[modelageek]

a flashing cel light indicates and issue that could ruin your cat converters. it is not as bad as an oil light coming on, however you dont want to be driving around much with it flashing. a lot of times it is misfires. see what codes got thrown

[FireRanger]

A flashing CEL indicates significant misfire in one or more cylinders. Either it isn't igniting at all, or is barely igniting, or igniting at a terribly bad time. The result is a comparatively large amount of unburned fuel getting dumped out the exhaust. This is going FUBAR your emissions system.

Most common causes are simple things like a bad spark plug, bad spark plug wire, or a spark plug wire that has come loose. Other causes could be a failing DIS coilpack, or a busted fuel injector.

Look under the hood and make sure nothing is loose or falling apart. You might just find something loose and plug it back in. If you read the codes (with a code reader or scangauge), it will tell you which cylinder has the misfire and start there with the plug and wire. If that doesn't fix it, its probably an injector.

[Pineapple]

ok well i replaced the spark plugs recently because the old ones were worn badly. thanks for the ideas im going start with the codes and see were that leads me i have a feeling its the spark plug wires when i did the plugs i noticed 1 or 2 that were chafed