Welcome Visitor! Please take a few seconds and Thomasain
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2019
- Messages
- 1
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 3
- Location
- Springville AL
- Vehicle Year
- 1991
- Make / Model
- Ford Ranger
- Transmission
- Manual
Moss here. I found the forum when I started having troubles that I couldn't figure out. Hellooooooo Admin: feel free to stick this post anywhere that it "fits". I'm going to tell the story in the order it happened.
Check Engine was on when I bought it (90K), but I was getting 27.4 MPG and it ran great, so I put off fixing whatever was causing it. I figured it was an evap issue, and whoop-de-do. Well, at around 149K I had a hard start. It felt like I had a carb and no choke, but it popped off after a few tries. Idle was three cylinders for about 5 seconds, then it coughed (literally) and ran like a champ. A few days later the same thing happened. I'd run the gas out from before, so I squashed my initial thought of water in the gas. Surely I didn't get watered-up gas twice in a row. Still a consideration, but after 5 seconds of running like garbage, there was no further issue. A fuel filter is cheap and fast to replace, so I did that. It started fine, but then again my problem was kind of random. A few days later it showed up again.
As the weeks went by it got worse in frequency and duration, but the one symptom that endured was that I had The Problem after it sat overnight. Once it fixed itself (again by coughing) it ran great for the rest of that day. It worsened to the point that it screwed up every single day, not just the first start of the day, but every time I started it. At this point I had done plugs (all 8)/wires/fuel filter, air filter. I started it cold, ran it for 15 seconds, then thermoed the header. #1 was 30 degrees cooler than the rest, so at least I found out where my misfire was. It wasn't plugs or wires, so I thought it might be the coil. Well, no- it has two coil packs? So yay I have redundancy! Nope. I didn't know at the time that only ONE coil pack fired on startup. I found that out on this forum (I think) then thought AHA and switched the coil packs around. GENIUS. It started fine. Once.
I thought: leaking injector. When I turn it off, fuel drips onto the #1 piston, all night long, then #1 is flooded when I fire it up in the morning, and it takes a few seconds to blow that gas out and allow #1 to fire. GENIUS. I replaced the #1 injector (cause you can do that without taking the intake off) and YAHOO it started fine! Once.
So now I'm thinking 'why did it start fine ONCE? It did that when I swapped the coil packs. Started fine one time then went back to screwing up.' That didn't make any sense either. I pulled the error code, and it was EGR related. I put an EGR valve on it. Nope. Put an EGR solenoid on. No. Seriously? So I bought a speedo cable insert, frayed one end, put the other end in my drill and roto-rootered the EGR pipe thinking it was clogged with soot. No good. Finally analyzed the vacuum path and replaced the EGR vacuum solenoid on the opposite side of the engine bay. Check engine went off, and I cleared any stored 'hard' codes it would allow me to. Any others would be cleared by warming cycles. Still had the same intermittent problem. Oh - ya, now it's back to being intermittent. Sometimes it would act funny for a solid week, sometimes two weeks. Then it would return out of nowhere. I couldn't relate it to temperature, humidity, nothi- WAIT A MINUTE. The ECM is getting its information from what? Intake air sensor, MAF, coolant temp, etc. I have free labor, I'll just replace all of the sensors that feed the ECM. Genius?
Well it started GREAT and I thought 'I don't know which one of those damnable sensors did it, but ONE of em did, so screw it.' Until a couple of days later when it started hard again. And in PRECISELY the same manner: hard start, rough idle, a shuddering cough, then purring like the proverbial kitten.
What else affects ignition? ICM? Okay, let's throw an ICM at it. Same crap. Fuel pump. Same. Fuel pressure regulator. Same.
Let's think. If all of the sensors feeding the ECM are NEW (not to mention all of the other stuff I've done) and it's STILL not starting right, then it's got to be the computer. The problem exists when it's cold, hot, warm, wet, dry, whatever. I don't have a problem that manifests "when it's cold" or "after it warms up" - it has it whenever the hell it wants. It's GOT to be the ECM. So I replaced it. It started great for one day, then (drumroll) Same problem. Same EXACT problem. Rough/cough/purr.
Let's really dig in and see if I don't have a serious issue. I checked compression. 155, 150, 120, 175. Huh? Okay you bastage, I have money, eBay, Rock Auto, AND free labor. 120 isn't ...horrible, but my problem is with #1, not #3. And what the hell am I doing with 175 in #4? Compression checks are nothing without leakdown, and I pulled enough crap off of the engine to do one. I fed it 100 PSI, and I got an 80% loss through the intake on #3. While that barely made sense considering #3 had 120, with an 80% loss it shouldn't run on all 4 EVER. I mean that's like a hole in a valve. I pulled the head.
In the little isthmus between #2 and #3, the narrowest part, I had blown head gasket evidence. But my #3 intake valve looked fantastic. Why was I losing so much through the #3 intake? So I thought #3 was losing its compression into #2 (since the gasket had popped between the two) but #2 only showed 150, while #4 was too high. And although I guessed that I'd find #4's combustion chamber full of carbon, it was clean as a pin. Then I thought I might have a collapsed oil ring. Well, no, wait- my leakdown test never sent air into the crankcase. Further inspection of the head showed a crack.
I AM THE WINNER
No I'm not. I bought a reman head, popped it all back together, replaced ALL FOUR injectors while I was at it, both coil packs, the crank sensor, MAF sensor, and IAC valve.
Same
exact
problem
I am going to cut a bitch. I've been working on cars/trucks/bikes since 1990. BMW Master Certified, Porsche trained, Honda, Kawasaki, Triumph, H-D, with 20 years of being the only mechanic in the shop and I CAN'T FIX THIS FREAKIN 4 CYLINDER OLD SCHOOL RANGER?! Are you kidding me? But I don't quit. Can't quit. Won't. Pulled codes again. Got a new one: Bank 1 lean (probably an O2 sensor). I'd changed it months ago, but after all the crap I'd sent through my pipe, I put another in. Same problem. Rage. I remembered that when I'd changed my fuel filter weeks before, it started GREAT. So I pulled the filter, then shook its contents into a glass jar. It had black stuff in it. It looked like crushed aquarium gravel. Well hell that's charcoal. Hey. HEY. HEYHEYHEY I've &#"@-in figgered this #&@! out! (I was really rolling) I've gotten gas into the vacuum line that leads to the carbon can, and probably filled that thing with gas and who knows what else. Not to mention that thing is 27 years old. I took the can off and shook it, and it was rattly and shook charcoal out. That's not supposed to happen. Replaced the can. Same problem. What's left? There's a dang solenoid that acts like a check valve for the carbon can, but the damn thing is on top of the fuel tank. What if I got some of that carbon in there and it's stuck? Well either it's stuck or it's not, and my problem is still INTERMITTENT. How can that thing stick then unstick itself over and over like that?
There's this guy named Brian at Turner's in Sylacauga, and his diagnostic skills are infuriatingly spectacular. I don't want to put an engine in this truck (it probably wouldn't do any good) but I know I'm just tired of beating my head against this wall. Have at it, Brian.
He called the next day. "Your computer's bad." Au contraire, mon frère! I put one in there less than 400 miles ago. I didn't want to have the only time Brian got it wrong to be on MY TRUCK, but facts are facts. I told him about the ECM I'd replaced, and he asked if it was a reman. Well yeah, I mean you can't get a new one for a '91. He said reman ECMs are about 50/50. I told him that, earlier in my life, I had come to the conclusion that it was the ECM as well, and replaced it, but it apparently wasn't, but I also didn't consider that I'd gotten a bad one. I ordered another reman, but I ALSO found a salvage yard about 2 hours away with 2 ECMs for the 90-91 2.3. Really? Could you, ah, put your hands on those for me, cause you're about the only dude in the SouthEast who has one, let alone two. Hang on, he said. YEP. Got both of them on my desk here. DUDE I'm on the way. So now we're armed with 3 more ECMs. Brian called as I was on the way back. It rained like a sonofagun last night. Yeah? Well yesterday it started rough, but this morning when we tried to bring it back into the shop, it WOULD NOT RUN. We had to push it. Well that's never been an issue beforenowaitaminute last month it ran fine for three whole weeks, then the drought broke and it was back to the same old crap, but that was just bad luck. I thought.
Anyway, we put the latest ECM in (one from the scrap yard, not the reman) and it has run like a champ ever since. Now, the moral of the story isn't that I got a bad reman all those weeks ago. I GOT A GOOD REMAN. Because here's the rest of the story:
Up where the A-pillar meets the two pinched-together roof panels, and running along the top of the side windows, there's what looks like a rain gutter. Mine is filled in (sealed?) with a very hard, initially-liquid sealant. Brian told me the Big Secret: when he pulled the connector for the ECM, it had water in it. As he took the bad ECM apart to see how bad it was inside, water kept trickling out of the big ol' wiring harness that ran up beside the glove box. He shook it out, then blew air in there before hooking the new computer up, then put the computer sideways on a box in the floor. What happened was this:
Water got in through a crack in the sealant on the roof edge. The water went into the hollow channel that runs along the top, then down either end. One end is the A-pillar, the other (duh) the B-pillar. The B-pillar just leads to the space behind my back seat, but the A-pillar drained to the front edge of the door, then water went straight down. Well water's not supposed to get inside the A-pillar. Ford didn't account for that. And when water drops off of the slanted part of the pillar, it falls straight down, and what's right below, behind the kickpanel cover? The wiring harness for the ECM. So water smoked my stock ECM, I replaced it, and after a while, the water that was held captive in the fat wiring harness shook and drained its way into the ECM connector, and smoked the replacement. I took the inside trim out, exposing bare metal, and I can see the black sealant that holds my windshield in. I can pour water on my roof, and after about 20 seconds, water comes out inside my cab. If I put the trim back in, it will hit the trim and flow forward, straight toward the kickpanel. If it's a little water, no big deal. If it's a lot, BAM. If my truck was parked level, right side higher, left side higher, front higher, any way you want to orient the thing- it changed how water got in, and where it flowed. So sometimes after a rain, it messed up. Sometimes not. Sometimes it had rained on a Tuesday and I hadn't started it until Thursday, and it would start fine, but the water would work its way down the harness by Friday, then I had a problem, but it was four days later, so I didn't equate rain with my problem. But when we had our drought this summer, that was when I had the head off, doing all of the work I was doing. I missed the chance to have it run great the whole time the weather was dry (but who knows what washing it would do?).
I had to tell this story because there are people with an intermittent hard starting problem. I googled my symptoms and got a result on some forum, and the OP's header was almost verbatim what I had searched for. I read the whole thing, and then it just ...stopped. Cold. Like he either fixed it and went on with his life, gave up and sold the truck, or died. I never saw an answer. But now by Crackey I HAVE an answer, and this is a good one. I'm not the only one this has happened to. No way. So remember this story, folks. And here's a take-home for you: if it hadn't rained so hard the night before Brian pulled it into his shop, that connector wouldn't have been wet, he'd have replaced the computer not realizing what the cause was, and I'd have smoked a third ECM.
Check Engine was on when I bought it (90K), but I was getting 27.4 MPG and it ran great, so I put off fixing whatever was causing it. I figured it was an evap issue, and whoop-de-do. Well, at around 149K I had a hard start. It felt like I had a carb and no choke, but it popped off after a few tries. Idle was three cylinders for about 5 seconds, then it coughed (literally) and ran like a champ. A few days later the same thing happened. I'd run the gas out from before, so I squashed my initial thought of water in the gas. Surely I didn't get watered-up gas twice in a row. Still a consideration, but after 5 seconds of running like garbage, there was no further issue. A fuel filter is cheap and fast to replace, so I did that. It started fine, but then again my problem was kind of random. A few days later it showed up again.
As the weeks went by it got worse in frequency and duration, but the one symptom that endured was that I had The Problem after it sat overnight. Once it fixed itself (again by coughing) it ran great for the rest of that day. It worsened to the point that it screwed up every single day, not just the first start of the day, but every time I started it. At this point I had done plugs (all 8)/wires/fuel filter, air filter. I started it cold, ran it for 15 seconds, then thermoed the header. #1 was 30 degrees cooler than the rest, so at least I found out where my misfire was. It wasn't plugs or wires, so I thought it might be the coil. Well, no- it has two coil packs? So yay I have redundancy! Nope. I didn't know at the time that only ONE coil pack fired on startup. I found that out on this forum (I think) then thought AHA and switched the coil packs around. GENIUS. It started fine. Once.
I thought: leaking injector. When I turn it off, fuel drips onto the #1 piston, all night long, then #1 is flooded when I fire it up in the morning, and it takes a few seconds to blow that gas out and allow #1 to fire. GENIUS. I replaced the #1 injector (cause you can do that without taking the intake off) and YAHOO it started fine! Once.
So now I'm thinking 'why did it start fine ONCE? It did that when I swapped the coil packs. Started fine one time then went back to screwing up.' That didn't make any sense either. I pulled the error code, and it was EGR related. I put an EGR valve on it. Nope. Put an EGR solenoid on. No. Seriously? So I bought a speedo cable insert, frayed one end, put the other end in my drill and roto-rootered the EGR pipe thinking it was clogged with soot. No good. Finally analyzed the vacuum path and replaced the EGR vacuum solenoid on the opposite side of the engine bay. Check engine went off, and I cleared any stored 'hard' codes it would allow me to. Any others would be cleared by warming cycles. Still had the same intermittent problem. Oh - ya, now it's back to being intermittent. Sometimes it would act funny for a solid week, sometimes two weeks. Then it would return out of nowhere. I couldn't relate it to temperature, humidity, nothi- WAIT A MINUTE. The ECM is getting its information from what? Intake air sensor, MAF, coolant temp, etc. I have free labor, I'll just replace all of the sensors that feed the ECM. Genius?
Well it started GREAT and I thought 'I don't know which one of those damnable sensors did it, but ONE of em did, so screw it.' Until a couple of days later when it started hard again. And in PRECISELY the same manner: hard start, rough idle, a shuddering cough, then purring like the proverbial kitten.
What else affects ignition? ICM? Okay, let's throw an ICM at it. Same crap. Fuel pump. Same. Fuel pressure regulator. Same.
Let's think. If all of the sensors feeding the ECM are NEW (not to mention all of the other stuff I've done) and it's STILL not starting right, then it's got to be the computer. The problem exists when it's cold, hot, warm, wet, dry, whatever. I don't have a problem that manifests "when it's cold" or "after it warms up" - it has it whenever the hell it wants. It's GOT to be the ECM. So I replaced it. It started great for one day, then (drumroll) Same problem. Same EXACT problem. Rough/cough/purr.
Let's really dig in and see if I don't have a serious issue. I checked compression. 155, 150, 120, 175. Huh? Okay you bastage, I have money, eBay, Rock Auto, AND free labor. 120 isn't ...horrible, but my problem is with #1, not #3. And what the hell am I doing with 175 in #4? Compression checks are nothing without leakdown, and I pulled enough crap off of the engine to do one. I fed it 100 PSI, and I got an 80% loss through the intake on #3. While that barely made sense considering #3 had 120, with an 80% loss it shouldn't run on all 4 EVER. I mean that's like a hole in a valve. I pulled the head.
In the little isthmus between #2 and #3, the narrowest part, I had blown head gasket evidence. But my #3 intake valve looked fantastic. Why was I losing so much through the #3 intake? So I thought #3 was losing its compression into #2 (since the gasket had popped between the two) but #2 only showed 150, while #4 was too high. And although I guessed that I'd find #4's combustion chamber full of carbon, it was clean as a pin. Then I thought I might have a collapsed oil ring. Well, no, wait- my leakdown test never sent air into the crankcase. Further inspection of the head showed a crack.
I AM THE WINNER
No I'm not. I bought a reman head, popped it all back together, replaced ALL FOUR injectors while I was at it, both coil packs, the crank sensor, MAF sensor, and IAC valve.
Same
exact
problem
I am going to cut a bitch. I've been working on cars/trucks/bikes since 1990. BMW Master Certified, Porsche trained, Honda, Kawasaki, Triumph, H-D, with 20 years of being the only mechanic in the shop and I CAN'T FIX THIS FREAKIN 4 CYLINDER OLD SCHOOL RANGER?! Are you kidding me? But I don't quit. Can't quit. Won't. Pulled codes again. Got a new one: Bank 1 lean (probably an O2 sensor). I'd changed it months ago, but after all the crap I'd sent through my pipe, I put another in. Same problem. Rage. I remembered that when I'd changed my fuel filter weeks before, it started GREAT. So I pulled the filter, then shook its contents into a glass jar. It had black stuff in it. It looked like crushed aquarium gravel. Well hell that's charcoal. Hey. HEY. HEYHEYHEY I've &#"@-in figgered this #&@! out! (I was really rolling) I've gotten gas into the vacuum line that leads to the carbon can, and probably filled that thing with gas and who knows what else. Not to mention that thing is 27 years old. I took the can off and shook it, and it was rattly and shook charcoal out. That's not supposed to happen. Replaced the can. Same problem. What's left? There's a dang solenoid that acts like a check valve for the carbon can, but the damn thing is on top of the fuel tank. What if I got some of that carbon in there and it's stuck? Well either it's stuck or it's not, and my problem is still INTERMITTENT. How can that thing stick then unstick itself over and over like that?
There's this guy named Brian at Turner's in Sylacauga, and his diagnostic skills are infuriatingly spectacular. I don't want to put an engine in this truck (it probably wouldn't do any good) but I know I'm just tired of beating my head against this wall. Have at it, Brian.
He called the next day. "Your computer's bad." Au contraire, mon frère! I put one in there less than 400 miles ago. I didn't want to have the only time Brian got it wrong to be on MY TRUCK, but facts are facts. I told him about the ECM I'd replaced, and he asked if it was a reman. Well yeah, I mean you can't get a new one for a '91. He said reman ECMs are about 50/50. I told him that, earlier in my life, I had come to the conclusion that it was the ECM as well, and replaced it, but it apparently wasn't, but I also didn't consider that I'd gotten a bad one. I ordered another reman, but I ALSO found a salvage yard about 2 hours away with 2 ECMs for the 90-91 2.3. Really? Could you, ah, put your hands on those for me, cause you're about the only dude in the SouthEast who has one, let alone two. Hang on, he said. YEP. Got both of them on my desk here. DUDE I'm on the way. So now we're armed with 3 more ECMs. Brian called as I was on the way back. It rained like a sonofagun last night. Yeah? Well yesterday it started rough, but this morning when we tried to bring it back into the shop, it WOULD NOT RUN. We had to push it. Well that's never been an issue beforenowaitaminute last month it ran fine for three whole weeks, then the drought broke and it was back to the same old crap, but that was just bad luck. I thought.
Anyway, we put the latest ECM in (one from the scrap yard, not the reman) and it has run like a champ ever since. Now, the moral of the story isn't that I got a bad reman all those weeks ago. I GOT A GOOD REMAN. Because here's the rest of the story:
Up where the A-pillar meets the two pinched-together roof panels, and running along the top of the side windows, there's what looks like a rain gutter. Mine is filled in (sealed?) with a very hard, initially-liquid sealant. Brian told me the Big Secret: when he pulled the connector for the ECM, it had water in it. As he took the bad ECM apart to see how bad it was inside, water kept trickling out of the big ol' wiring harness that ran up beside the glove box. He shook it out, then blew air in there before hooking the new computer up, then put the computer sideways on a box in the floor. What happened was this:
Water got in through a crack in the sealant on the roof edge. The water went into the hollow channel that runs along the top, then down either end. One end is the A-pillar, the other (duh) the B-pillar. The B-pillar just leads to the space behind my back seat, but the A-pillar drained to the front edge of the door, then water went straight down. Well water's not supposed to get inside the A-pillar. Ford didn't account for that. And when water drops off of the slanted part of the pillar, it falls straight down, and what's right below, behind the kickpanel cover? The wiring harness for the ECM. So water smoked my stock ECM, I replaced it, and after a while, the water that was held captive in the fat wiring harness shook and drained its way into the ECM connector, and smoked the replacement. I took the inside trim out, exposing bare metal, and I can see the black sealant that holds my windshield in. I can pour water on my roof, and after about 20 seconds, water comes out inside my cab. If I put the trim back in, it will hit the trim and flow forward, straight toward the kickpanel. If it's a little water, no big deal. If it's a lot, BAM. If my truck was parked level, right side higher, left side higher, front higher, any way you want to orient the thing- it changed how water got in, and where it flowed. So sometimes after a rain, it messed up. Sometimes not. Sometimes it had rained on a Tuesday and I hadn't started it until Thursday, and it would start fine, but the water would work its way down the harness by Friday, then I had a problem, but it was four days later, so I didn't equate rain with my problem. But when we had our drought this summer, that was when I had the head off, doing all of the work I was doing. I missed the chance to have it run great the whole time the weather was dry (but who knows what washing it would do?).
I had to tell this story because there are people with an intermittent hard starting problem. I googled my symptoms and got a result on some forum, and the OP's header was almost verbatim what I had searched for. I read the whole thing, and then it just ...stopped. Cold. Like he either fixed it and went on with his life, gave up and sold the truck, or died. I never saw an answer. But now by Crackey I HAVE an answer, and this is a good one. I'm not the only one this has happened to. No way. So remember this story, folks. And here's a take-home for you: if it hadn't rained so hard the night before Brian pulled it into his shop, that connector wouldn't have been wet, he'd have replaced the computer not realizing what the cause was, and I'd have smoked a third ECM.
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