I appreciate your insight. I asked the service writer if he considered the fuel delivery/pressurization and he admitted that this was not checked. He suggested that I replace all 6 plugs, which I politely declined, since they were already replaced in Oct98 and March 2000 by his shop! I suggested to him that there would be no value in replacing the plugs and that they were not the problem with triggering the "miscellaneous" engine code. He admitted this too. I declined to take the car out today, since he has not diagnosed the problem, and I suggested that he do a "spirited" test drive, with hard turns, to trigger the problem again. I don't know if the problem fixed itself or if his resetting the error code made the engine run properly. Whatever the issue, I don't want to take the car until they tell me they have pinpointed this troublesome problem. It seems that all they do is plug it into the computer and do what it says without any other diagnostic analysis. Do you agree that the plugs are pointless?
thanks