shelbygt1969

So I leave the house the other day, 5 minutes in, just easy driving in the neighborhood and the car started sputtering bad out of the blue, to the point that accelerating made the car nearly undriveable. I got no CEL at that point. Got the car home and in the dark when revving the car, I could see all kinds of points where the plug wires were shorting out on the engine (I know, I'm a dumbass for not changing them earlier). I also found that most of the plugs were fouled. I hooked up the OBDII scanner and there was 2 codes for misfire cylinder P0302 and P0306 for cylinder 2 and 6 (which are on 2 different coil packs). I don't know how old the codes are so I clear them and at first, no codes return and no CEL. In the process of testing the connectors and such the car would only run if I feathered the gas and held it at a certain rpm about 1400 and got a couple of loud backfires in the attempt to discover what was bad.

A long story short, I determined the right coil pack was bad and I got 2 new ones along with new Ford wires and plugs which made the car run and drive again.

I think the car is fixed, until I try to accelerate. The car sputters and stumbles until I get up to about 4-5k RPM then seems to clear up for the most part. If I baby it and accelerate slowly through the gears, it is not too noticeable. It is REALLY bad if you are in a high gear and try to accelerate.
It also still randomly sputters/misses at idle as well. But If you take it up through the full RPM range slowly and nail the throttle @ around 4k... it screams to life and pulls hard right up to near 6500 RPMs.
So far this is what I have replaced:
plug
plugs wires
both coil packs
fuel filter
alternator
both upstream 02 sensors


I hope someone has any idea what is going on
Thanks for any help!!
Dave

shelbygt1969

You can hear the missing at idle as well as the hesitation when accelerating.

uberstang1

I bet your IMRCS need a cleaning

BraMas

fixed it for you

shelbygt1969

Wouldn't that mean they are stuck open, even though there are no codes? There is also a prominent pop or misfire at idle. Could the backfire that happened from the bad coil bend or damage the plates or linkage to the IMRCs? I plan on testing the fuel pressure and taking the intake off today and see how the IMRCs look.

dfordguy

Try lookin at number 2 and number 6 injectors

uberstang1

Just delete the IMRCs youll loose a little torque but its worth headache reduction.

shelbygt1969

I will probably delete them in the future, but I am over $500 and counting on this thing and just want to get it running right before I spend any more cash on mods.
The IMRCs are not too bad, but the half of the valves with the IMRC butterflies are LOADED with carbon deposits! What is the best course to clean these without removing the heads?

http://ascmclaren.com/spectrum/web/imrc1.JPG
http://ascmclaren.com/spectrum/web/valve1photo.JPG

JC316

What brand of coil pack did you use? Also, likely a stupid question, but are you sure you got the wires hooked up to the correct places?

shelbygt1969

I got 2 Autozone coil packs (the better 2 yr warranty ones) and replaced them both and found that the drivers side one was the only bad one so I put the OEM pack back on the passenger's side and returned the other one. I checked the plug wiring and firing order many times. Unless both new Autozone packs were bad, I don't think they would be an issue? I am now second guessing that maybe the pack that I kept turns out to be defective, so once I get it all back together, I will be exchanging this one again and see what happens. I will be sofa king pissed if that was the issue all along!
Thanks!