mebirkle

Howdy,

I took the "new" ride on it's first road trip and had to hit the brakes pretty hard while going about 70mph. I got back on the gas and had 0 power as the motor appeared to be just spinning without running. I pushed in the clutch and saw the battery light on the dashboard and the motor did stall. I then down-shifted for 4th and pop-started (well, not really popped it as I was going about 55 at that point) and it started running again.

I'm about 250 miles from home and the car seems fine right now starting right up, braking and running, etc. This condition only happened once. Battery cable??? I would hate to see this issue again on the ride back to Raleigh.

Does anyone have a clue where I should start looking for this bug?

I guess I'm still working out the bugs on this beast... my first Ford isn't loving me too much yet.

Thanks for any and all kind advice.

Dave

petrock

A complete guess, but how much gas was in your tank at the time? The heavy braking may have forced the gas to the front of the tank and away from the pump starving the pump of fuel and thus stalling the motor.

Alternate guess would depend on the type of stall. If the car just died suddenly instead of sputtering (like it was starved of fuel), then a loose ground connection somewhere could be the problem.

Good luck...

mebirkle

Thanks petrock.... good guesses. The motor did not sputter at all but just literally lost spark or fuel was cut-off. There was not loss of electric in the car (lights, dash, stereo, etc.)... something like spark or fuel seemed to be the issue.

94redGTConv

just a guess have you tuned her up? maybe the distributor wiggled lose


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Derf00

Maybe a fuel shuttoff inertia switch not working correctly. Depending on how hard you hit that brake pedal, you could have tipped it but not tripped it.

Have you tried to duplicate the problem?

FrostByte

hmmm? Computer saw something that made it cut fuel or spark when u hit brakes.

mattdel

This man is on the right track, except gas tanks have baffles to prevent slosh. However, fox tanks are extremely susceptible to the baffles breaking free, and possibly destroying the pump and sending unit in the process. OP's claim of hard braking is exactly the type of situation where that would happen.

Go through the motions of the above posts, if you want, but chances are good it's the tank causing it. If you want to further test it, the next time the car has around 1/4 tank, go find yourself a nice safe right-hand turn that you can take with some speed, and nail the throttle through the curve. If your baffle has broken free, and you take the corner hard enough, the car will stall, or at the least it will seem to cut off, then suddenly spring back to life.

mebirkle

If it's the tank... is it a new tank that is the fix?

I think that maybe it's the ground small ground wire on the battery that goes to the fuel pump. It seems frayed (spelling). I'm putting a batter terminal / new cable end on it tonight for the drive home and then see if I can safely reproduce the situation.

I'm torn between trying to reproduce the problem or just swapping parts to get it straight again. I have to admit that overall I'm not feeling I made a sound purchase. Oh well... gotta ride out the storm and make the car my own.

mebirkle

I have the Robles still only when braking. Now at slower seeds. Only seems to happen with a lot of gas in the tank. Ordered a new inertia switch from summit.

I am also going to drop the tank and see f anything broke loose. Seems like t could be the "tuna can"/baffles but the tank is usually mostly full. I can only reproduce when braking even at lights and it turns over for a while before starting. Progressively worse???

I may pickup a file gauge today and watch the pressure drop to make sure pressure is the issue and not spark.

Would the computer throw a code????

Thanks all!

mattdel

Not for a fuel/spark dropout, no. Fox computers aren't that sophisticated. If the baffle isn't the problem, it might be an issue with a power/ground shorting. Perform a wiggle test to verify that.