don,t know what else to try!

kabappa said:

I have a 87 ranger 2.3l fuel injected,,140,000. Owned since new and did all my own mtce on it. Never let me down,,,until now. It has now started to stall on me. Without any notice, I will be driving and its as if someone turns the key to shut the engine. Sometimes it will start right back up and I'll drive for 10 mins and it will happen again and sometimes it won't happen all day. Other times when it stalls I cant get it to start for at least 15 min. or it will start and run very very rough,the engine will shake and I will shut it down and it will restart and run fine. I am afraid to use it now. I will leave it in the driveway and start it up and let it run. Sometimes it will run for hrs and other times it will start and stall right away. I have replaced both fuel pumps,,fuel filter,,,spark plugs,,spark plug wires,,dist cap and roter,,ignition coil,,ignition control module. My next step was to replace the pickup coil in the distributor. Now I'm thinking I should have first checked for error codes. I have an old popular mechanix magizine that explains how to do it with a analog meter..but I dont know which connector to plug it into in the engine compartment because there are more than one. I'm afraid this trouble is going to beat me and I'll have to get rid of the truck. I'm hoping someone out there could lead me to the answer. HELP!! and THANKS in advance

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Funnyman141 said:

is the truck running a little rich?

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kabappa said:

Hi all,
I don't believe my truck has a maf sensor. I checked my chilton's man. which does not show one and the autozone web site doesn't show one for my vehicle either.
It may be burning a little rich, but I don,t think its excessive. It's not like there is black soot on the tailpipe or black exhaust.
I did chance the iac a couple years back because the engine would not race when I first started it on winter mornings. And the new iac corrected that.
I took SykoRanger88 advice today and removed the engine grd wire that runs from the firewall at the wiper motor to the engine block. I cleaned everything up nice and shiny and reinstalled it.
I started the truck and only had enough time to let it idle in the driveway for about an hr. It ran fine without stalling.
I will let it run longer tommorow to see what happens. I will post the outcome. Thanks[/QUOTE
If you are fuel injected you should have a MAF Mass Air Flow sensor. Its the little black sensor on top of the intake tube between the airbox and throttle body with wires coming out. But it wont make the truck just die like you are explaining, It will run very rich and crappy if its the maf. Sounds more like a groundwire. Or perhaps your connection at the EEC is faulty or the EEC itself. The ignition cylinder could be having an issue as well. With the v8 mustangs 87 was a Air Speed density system and not mass air. If the ranger were the same thats the only reason I can think that you wouldnt have a MAF. But I'm pretty sure its there.

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kabappa said:

Well, I replaced the pickup coil. So far so good. I let it idle in the driveway for a few hrs and it didnt stall. Took it out for a little ride and still didnt stall.
I believe I put everthing back exactly as it was, but was thinking about checking the base timing. I have read where you have to remove the spout wire to do that. The spout wire is one of the wires in the tfi module connector. So do I disconnet the whole connector(wouldnt that make the engine stall?) Or do I remove the one spout wire out of the connector while I adjust the base timing?

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