Welcome Visitor! Please take a few seconds and tmcalavy
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2012
- Messages
- 872
- Vehicle Year
- 93
- Transmission
- Automatic
Okay, I've posting about the occasional sporadic miss on my 93 XLT with 3.0 engine. Long story short, random hard miss that would come and go regardless of weather, seemed linked to heat as it would pop up most after the truck has been down the road for a couple of hours...but not always. Checked the usual culprits, coil, dist. cap, rotor, plugs, wires, etc. and wound up cleaning plugs, replacing wires, replacing dist. cap and rotor and even the MAF sensor. All of these made it run better but the miss would always return. So I found this website:
http://troubleshootmyvehicle.com/ford/3.0L-3.8L/index-of-articles-1
and started off with the ignition tests, coil, coil wires, plug wires, dist., etc. and the moved on to the ignition control module test. My ranger has no EGR, old style dist. and ICM on the front fender, way up front by the battery and driver's headlight. I bought an HEI spark tester and LED test light off of Schmebay...gotta have more tools, right?...for less than $20 and went through all the tests. Everything checked out except the ICM, so I dropped $59 for a Standard brand ICM at ABC Auto Parts and the pesky, f-ked up miss seems to have disappeared. So, all told I dropped about $25 on plug wires, $30 on dist. cap and rotor, $20 on tools, $60 on a MAF sensor (unnecessary, probably), and $59 on an ICM to fix this problem...that's $200 more or less, and I coulda save some of that if I had found the troubleshooting website first...probably coulda fixed it for around $20 in tools and $59 for the ICM. But hey, it's a 21-year old Ford so it extracts its pound of flesh and chunks of knuckle from time to time. So, if you're fighting a miss start with the ignition tests and move to slowly until you narrow it down. Mods if you want to move this to the 3.0 graveyard forum, please give it a day or two so some can see this and maybe benefit from it first. Oh yeah, if you do have to replace the fender-mounted ICM you will need a set of deep small sockets to get the ICM off of the heat sink that bolts to the fender. Otherwise, you'll have to do what I did...pry the module off the heat sink, remove the stock tiny bolts and replace them with some similar tiny bolts with Phillips or slotted heads out of your stash of old nuts/bolts/screws, etc. "Fix it up, wear it out, make it do, do without...and never, never throw anything usable away."
http://troubleshootmyvehicle.com/ford/3.0L-3.8L/index-of-articles-1
and started off with the ignition tests, coil, coil wires, plug wires, dist., etc. and the moved on to the ignition control module test. My ranger has no EGR, old style dist. and ICM on the front fender, way up front by the battery and driver's headlight. I bought an HEI spark tester and LED test light off of Schmebay...gotta have more tools, right?...for less than $20 and went through all the tests. Everything checked out except the ICM, so I dropped $59 for a Standard brand ICM at ABC Auto Parts and the pesky, f-ked up miss seems to have disappeared. So, all told I dropped about $25 on plug wires, $30 on dist. cap and rotor, $20 on tools, $60 on a MAF sensor (unnecessary, probably), and $59 on an ICM to fix this problem...that's $200 more or less, and I coulda save some of that if I had found the troubleshooting website first...probably coulda fixed it for around $20 in tools and $59 for the ICM. But hey, it's a 21-year old Ford so it extracts its pound of flesh and chunks of knuckle from time to time. So, if you're fighting a miss start with the ignition tests and move to slowly until you narrow it down. Mods if you want to move this to the 3.0 graveyard forum, please give it a day or two so some can see this and maybe benefit from it first. Oh yeah, if you do have to replace the fender-mounted ICM you will need a set of deep small sockets to get the ICM off of the heat sink that bolts to the fender. Otherwise, you'll have to do what I did...pry the module off the heat sink, remove the stock tiny bolts and replace them with some similar tiny bolts with Phillips or slotted heads out of your stash of old nuts/bolts/screws, etc. "Fix it up, wear it out, make it do, do without...and never, never throw anything usable away."
Last edited:
