Well a couple days ago I went out to start the car to get ready for work. When I walked out I saw a puddle of oil underneath the car that would have excited the Beverly Hill Billies. It was all over the place.
Im panicing thinking something is MAJORLY wrong with the car. My first though was that maybe one of the bypass oil lines had come loose or completely off. But after inspecting the lines, the oil pan and everything I could think of I finally found the cause. The friggin oil cap had come off and had proceeded to eject nearly all the oil out the top of the motor. I believe sometime after I had left work because there was not a drop of oil under the car before I left work which means I could have drove nearly 40 miles in that condition. It also means that if not for the added 2 - 2.5 quart capacity of the bypass system I would have most likely seized the motor since I was at highway speeds. The oil barely registered on the dipstick which would amount to about a 4qt loss of oil.
Anyway, there is oil all over everything as one would imagine. The bottom side of the hood, all over the motor, exhaust, literally everything. Well I take it and steam clean the motor drain the remaining oil, change out the two oil filters and add in some new oil. I drive to work and there is no problems other than the cruise control isnt working. The dash light comes on when its engaged but wont hold the speed. No biggie, I think I know what this is and when I get back home that evening I check the cable and it was good but didnt seem secured well to the throttle body lever so I corrected that and the cruise control is working again.
With the amount of oil everywhere I decide to pull all the plugs and plug wires and clean everything off (Screamin' Demon Coil and Live Wires w/Auotolite Double Plats). There wasnt any oil on the ends of the plugs but there was plenty around them so I got a rag down in there and got all that oil out, cleaned up and regapped all the plugs. I cleaned all the oil off the wires by putting them in a sinkfull of water and mean green cleaner. I sprayed electrical contact cleaner on all the coil towers and used a Q-Tip to get in there and clean everything out. Dried everything out as best I could and have no doubts I did indeed get it all dried out.
Now, because of time contstraints I was only able to do two wires/plugs on one day and two yesterday. But they are all cleaned out and I got all the oil out from around the plugs, off the plug wires and the coil and all the connections. Well I drove one day with just two of the plugs/wires cleaned off and all ran perfectly, no problems.
I did the cleaning more for appearance sake but also wanted to make sure no oil had gotten on any of the plug wire connections on the coil and to the plugs. I cleaned out the #3 and #4 plugs and wires yesterday evening, reconnected everything and didnt start the motor until this am to go to work. Everything worked fine, no problems. On the way to work, going up a hill I feel the car loose power, then started sputtering. Im hoping its not a timing thing, though Im pretty confident that isnt it but I despirately need to get that belt changed with over 100k on the car.
The car continues to sputter and it never clears. I pull into work and pop the hood and check the #3 and #4 wires and they seem on there well enough at both the plug end and at the coil. My suspision is that the coil has went bad, but I wanted to get some other input. I think maybe spraying the contact cleaner in there may have seeped past the towers to the internals of the coil and ruined something, though I dont know how that could be with the coil being epoxy sealed and all.
Im going to go out during lunch and look at all the connections on the coil end and see if anything is obvious. I dont know yet which cylinder isnt firing, no codes were set on the ECU, I have my scan tool and will see if any pending codes are in there that havent triggered the CEL yet.
I guess what I need is any input to anything I could be missing. I have a spare coil at home but thats 40 miles away. I hate to drive the thing that far with one cylinder not firing as it should. So anything you guys could add I would greatly appreciate it. I cant put stock plug wires on that coil because the coil is too hot for them. I might be able to for the purpose to rule out one of the plug wires being bad, but I doubt I could drive with it all the way back home.
Anyway, sorry for the long post but I wanted to give all the details. Thanks for any help.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
Im not mad or upset about it. After all the thing has 100k on it, though the coil and wires have no where near that much. Maybe 40k at best. Id like to find an MSD coil since they are red and would go well with my color them, but no one seems to have them around here for me to pick up today.
I can only explain the oil cap as my fault. I guess the last time I had it off I didnt put it on there good enough, its just unlikely it would vibrate out. Mine has a rubber O ring around it and it tightens up with heat like an oil fitler does.
Oh well, my suspiscion was the coil as well I just hoped I would be able to confirm it somehow. Thanks for your input Johnny and Chelly. Im going out to the car during lunch and will be definately checking the wires just to be sure. Though I would have thought that if it were the wires somehow that it wouldnt be firing at all. Its sputtering which is what led me to think it was the coil.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
See if dsomeone at work has a probe. I heard that the probes (I think) had the correct connectors on them to fit the demon coil. Its a thought.
Get somoene at home to bring you the coil and wires....
Changing my plugs fixed some of my stuttering but the coil resolved the rest of it.
Try and get a pair of plyers to tighten all the metal connectors on the plug wires. If you can get to the metal ends. I've never seen the ends of the livewires.
I went out during lunch and all the plug end connects were good. All the wires snapped onto the plug and none were loose. I checked all the coil end connections and all looked good there too, though the connections there have never been solid from day one. The one gripe I had about that particular ignition set up, I think they could have done a much much better job of making those connections more secure.
I took the Focus for a drive around the block so to speak and I didnt get any studdering out of it, so who knows, it could be a heat related failure. I guess we'll have to see once I head back home. I had a big Amsoil order to pick up but I guess I'll have to wait on that until I know what the status of all this is going to be.
When I was out on lunch I did recall a few days ago that I was getting some studdering when I really got into the gas and it got into the upper rpm range. At the time I chalked it up to just being low on gas, which I was, and figured the fuel pick up was getting some air or something, becauase as soon as I filled up I didnt notice it anymore and that was just a few days ago maybe.
So it may well be the coil. I know on an inductive ignition, in the higher rpm range there is less spark energy because of the way inductors charge and discharge and the time it takes them to do that so it could very well be that the earlier incident a few days ago could have been signaling a problem was developing. We'll see, I'll slap on my OEM ignition when I get home and see what happens.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
recheck your wires at the coil. had a similar stuttering, looked and everything seemed fine. that was until i used a needlenose to gently check the metal pieces in the wire ends. seems one of the ends broke at the bend in the boot and would stay in until i physically checked it this way.
whenever doing plugs or anything, always remove the coil end first to prevent stress when pulling the plug boot.
Okay, here's an update. I went out during lunch yesterday at work and checked all the connections and cleaned everything with a rag just to make sure some contacts weren't getting impeded. I had no studdering in normal driving like I did going to work yesterday. However, around 4200 RPM I was still getting a studder in the acceleration.
Well today I yanked the ingition system and put back in the OEM ignition wires and coil. I drive around some and everything is fine until I push it hard. I get up around 4200 - 4500 RPM and she starts to studder. Everything else is working just perfectly that I can tell. I didnt replace the spark plugs when I yanked the ignition, and I guess I should try that, but Ive never known plugs to do that, but fx3 says it fixed part of his problem so I'll give it a shot. I'd hate find out that that was the whole problem all along. I did have to pull the plugs and re-gap them down when I put in the OEM ignition because you can run 0.065" gap with the Screamin' Demon coil and Livewires. I re-gapped them down to 0.050" as called for in the manual.
So if its not the plugs, Im not sure what it could be and if anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate it. I guess Im going to have to break out the laptop scan tool and run some tests if I the plugs dont fix it or if no one has any other ideas. Thanks in advance.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
I probably should have been, but I thought it was the ignition system so I didnt give much thought to the need for it. If it persists after I replace the spark plugs then I probably will hook it up and see what I can find out with it.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
I noticed something else that may be a clue to someone. I had to go out and get groceries tonight so I hop in the car and take off. I decided to run it through the gears just for the heck of it and discovered that with the car not up to operating temp, there is no studdering at all. I ran it up to about 5000 RPM in first and it didnt studder at all. So whatever it is, it would seem that its affected by temperature, or when the car is fully warmed up and been driven a little.
I probably wont get the chance to hook up the scan tool until monday since all my cables are at work. Im going to try and take in my laptop so I can have it running on the trip back home and datalog the trip to see if anything shows up. But Im still open to any ideas anyone has before then.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
Okay, here's the update on the sputtering. I hooked up the scan tool leaving work today and decided to log the take offs and such. At idle my fuel pressure is around 35 psi, which is good. I take off normally and keep it under 4000 rpm and the fuel pressure stays around 35 - 40 psi depending on the load. As soon as I push it and get it above about 4200 - 4600 RPM it starts to studder and the fuel pressure has dropped to around 9 - 10 psi! Now, I cant say that I know exactly where it should be at that kind of load but Id bet its safe to say it aint supposed to be that low.
As long as I stay under 4000 RPM Im fine, which is no biggie, but storm season is here and I dont want to be stranded. I noticed a couple of months ago that my fuel mileage had dropped off to the tune of nearly 3 mpg. Quite a swing for me since Im used to getting around 29 or so mpg. I thought at the time that it was probably due to winter gas. However it has warmed up here significantly in the last week or two and my mileage has not improved. So I think I had some early indicators that there was an issue that I didnt pay attention to.
I just find it strange that it would finally give out the way it has so 'suddenly'. I never had any studdering that I noticed anyway up until a couple of weeks ago. My issue now is that Ive already had the fuel pump replaced once before Ford issued the recall on that particular part. My warranty covered part of it and I paid for the rest which Ford reimbursed me for when they issued the recall. So I have the old style pump and not the revised one. I wonder if Ford would be willing to replace it again under the Fuel Pump recall now? Does anyone know for sure?
At any rate, thats where I am with this thing. The only trouble I every really had with the Focus was the fuel pump and it seems to have reared its head again. Does anyone know of anything else that could cause such a fuel pressure drop at the mentioned RPM's? Does anyone know what the fuel pressure should be at that load or RPM? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I guess Im going to scour ebay for a fuel pump and see what the price of those things are there, though Im hoping Ford would be willing to replace the thing. I had it replaced at a Ford dealership so I cant claim its never been done before not to mention they reimbursed me for my out of pocket costs.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
Also, does anyone know of a good quality high performance aftermarket fuel pump for the Focus? Something that wont necessarily cost an arm and a leg and will have more durability and flow that the OEM one.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
Im going to try and replace the fuel filter tonight and see if that helps. I hope it will as it would be a cheaper alternative, but I dont see how the fuel filter would cause such a drop in pressure, but I cant rule it out either so therefore it will be replaced.
I seen some Focus fuel pumps on eBay last night that went for next to nothing, so if the fuel filter doesnt correct the isse then I will try an grab one. I would like to have an SVT fuel pump, but I would probably have to get that from the dealership and well we know how costly that would be, as well I dont know if it would be a direct replacement either so that could be an issue.
I'll keep everyone posted as to what goes on.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
Call the dealer first to check on the status of your fuel pump recall-ability. See if they won't cover it. IT sounds like a solid failure to me. Just tell them it happens after the car has been driven X number of minutes.
And I believe you have to drop the tank to change the pump.
http://www.ford-parts.com lists a pump for the Focus up to 12/06/01 and then another pump for after that. What's the difference (besides cost obviously)?
Yeah, they redesigned the fuel pump in January of last year. I have my doubts as to whether or not Ford will cover it under the recall since Ive already had the pump replaced once. If I had not been reimbursed for my cost in it under the recall then Im certain they would cover it. I can try, but Im not sure they will replace it.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
SyntheticShield wrote: Yeah, they redesigned the fuel pump in January of last year. I have my doubts as to whether or not Ford will cover it under the recall since Ive already had the pump replaced once. If I had not been reimbursed for my cost in it under the recall then Im certain they would cover it. I can try, but Im not sure they will replace it.
When did you have it replaced? Typically a 12/12 applies to replaced parts. I'd try it anyway Daniel
____________________ Get in, Sit down, Shut up and HANG ON!
