02 Taurus Ran Bad, HELP !!!

[Thomas C Potter]

Wife's car, she drove to friends house, 1/2 hour later would not start easily, once it did, ran bad, bucking all the way home. Worse thing is Ford Quality Care could not find any codes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!l Any thoughts ??? Any Ford aces in Fairfax VA area ?? Car has DOHC engine.

TP

[SergntMac]

Coughing, spitting and general hacking it up usually means a loss of compression, or, fuel charge in one or more cylinders. Could mean a dead spark plug, leaking intake gasket, or, head gasket...Just a guess though.

[Mike Poore]

Wife's car, she drove to friends house, 1/2 hour later would not start easily, once it did, ran bad, bucking all the way home. Worse thing is Ford Quality Care could not find any codes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!l Any thoughts ??? Any Ford aces in Fairfax VA area ?? Car has DOHC engine.

TPWater in the gas, and it ends up pluging up the fuel filter.

[RoyLPita]

If the vehicle is under 3 years or 36000 miles, take it in.

[cutt]

Wife's car, she drove to friends house, 1/2 hour later would not start easily, once it did, ran bad, bucking all the way home. Worse thing is Ford Quality Care could not find any codes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!l Any thoughts ??? Any Ford aces in Fairfax VA area ?? Car has DOHC engine.

TP
what size engine,how many litres?

[RoyLPita]

what size engine,how many litres?

Both engines for the Taurus in that year displaced 3.0 liters. One is a pushrod while the other is aluminum DOHC.

Just my .02 and then some.

[RF Overlord]

Both engines for the Taurus in that year displaced 3.0 liters. One is a pushrod while the other is aluminum DOHC.

^^^what Mr. Pita said^^^

The pushrod motor is the Vulcan and the DOHC motor is the Duratec...and they're nothing alike...

With symptoms like that, it could be almost anything... :dunno:

I hope your dealer is going to do more than simply look for codes and, finding none, give up... :shake:

[wchain]

If this is an 02 Taurus with the 3.0L DOHC Duratec engine, let me chime in on a few possibilites, first a little history, this is actually the engine that 'evolved' from the 2.5L V6 (later 3.0L) used in the Probe GT/Mazda MX6 Platform, (also used in Millenia, 626, V6 Escape, New 500 and Montego)

These engines are pretty reliable overall, and I maintain a fleet of a little over 150 (Progressive Insurance in Houston has them and they are phasing out 2 Door Explorers as we speak). There are two issues here that sound like they may be causing your problem, and IIRC, if your car has Coil on Plug Ignition, a faulty coil boot will cause poor performance and bucking, but sometimes not severe enough to trigger a CEL/DTC of any kind. The second issue that I have seen, is the DPFE Sensors failing prematurely on these engines, but I dont think a bad DPFE sensor would cause the bucking and shaking you speak of.

Perhaps they can check to see if there is a Pending misfire code, or like others have suggested, Fuel Issues as well. The the Stealer er I mean Dealer should be able to scope out issues like this as long as you bring it in while its duplicating this problem. Did you try taking it to Kip Kilman in Tyson's Corner, VA? I used them quite often when I lived there for 6 mos in an internship in DC. Fairly honest as far as a dealer goes.

Did it stall? What does the exhaust smell like?

I need more info (i.e. Miles, Fuel used, etc) to guess at this, but heres what I would check (not in any order):

-Good Spark @ All 6 Cylinders (Ign Coils, Plugs etc)
-Fuel Pressure (filter restriction, regulator, pump etc)
-Fuel Quality (water in fuel, diesel or other foreign substances)
-DTC (any Diag. Trouble Codes Avail)

Good luck
Wes

[David Morton]

One thing that can cause this kind of problem is a bad system ground. Once I fixed an Astro van w/70,000 mi., no codes, electronic-transmission in and out of any gear at any time and the radio off and on at the same time. Looked at the wiring diagram and found the common denominator - G100 (or was it G101?), a harness ground right in front of the battery, on the upper radiator support and, get this, the factory ground bolt had cross threaded and was 1/4" away from being tight! This had been good enough for 70K miles before it got bad enough to cause a symptom. Harness tension pulling the eyelet against the threads worked well enough to get that one out of warranty.

I've seen a lot of sloppy grounds on cars and I know why the factories are sloppy. It's the same reason the cars are negative ground in the first place. Negative is where the electrons are "coming out" and they are fresh, young and full of energy. Try this if you don't believe me. Take the negative cable clamp off your battery and just lay it back down on the post. The weight of the clamp touching the post will be a good enough connection to crank the car!

[merc406]

Water in the gas, and it ends up pluging up the fuel filter.


More than likely this is the prob., didn't you all just have flooding from hurricane's? Gas would be suspect 1 in all those states for poor driveability problems, stock up one some dry gas.