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Ended up replacing the wires again – warranty. The new ones had one that was really heating up after running a while. Checked resistance on that one and it was 23k ohm.
Replaced with new set and uphill chugging is completely gone. :cheer:
Pretty sure I just have that mount left now.
Thank you all, you’ve been awesome.
I cleaned it up and took more photos. There’s quite a few more cracks. It is much more damaged than I initially noticed.
Here’s a photo of the connector – there’s one crack to the right of the connector, and another (barely in this photo) near the top of the unit.
This speaks for itself.
Here’s the surface posterior related to the connector. There’s no less than six cracks in the case, and a hole.
Closeup and cleaned up on the bottom.
Or rather, I decided to take the coil off. Here’s what I found.
Replaced, test drive, seems better. Still struggles uphill but not nearly as much as it was.
No – thank YOU for walking me through a diagnosis to hunt this down. :woohoo: After doing all the things I discuss below there it is still acting up under load. One new thing I noticed is that it gets worse if the engine is warmed up. Going uphill cold it’s fine, warmed up it’s really struggling.
lar1969:
Spark test done. Scary as hell. Every wire scared me equally[s] – except cylinder #2. It sparks out of the wrong part of the plug. The others spark at the electrode end but cylinder 2’s plug sparks out of the porcelain (that’s what it is, right?) part. [/s] Nevermind – my fault. They all spark fine.When I cleaned up the coil pack there was this black gunky crap inside the part that you plug each spark plus wire into – it reminded me of grease, except stickier. Cleaned that out with a q-tip.
I’ll go ahead and do the voltage leak test tonight. It’s very humid here (Oklahoma) so that’ll be ideal. :cheer:
wafrederick:
Is there a way that I can measure good versus bad? I’m interested in testing this better – I did this and they all seem to be good.wysetech:
I planned on getting an OEM mount once I got this figured out. I just didn’t want to burn the cash to get one until I figure out if the car is worth it. I’ve heard plenty of bad things about anything else for that mount. I think the plugs were corroded because of a crack in a plug wire which I’ve since replaced. There’s been no more water getting in there since I did that.I’m not one of the regular regulars (words are hard this morning!) but I think I can help with that.
If you have a Google account you can go to Youtube and sign in, and click the Upload button in the top right corner.
I would also go ahead and take a look at Diagnosing Noises in Your Car, specifically CV Joints and FWD Axles. Is this a noise that you notice changing if you rev the engine in neutral versus going down the road?
Got an update for you.
After a couple of days, the engine started to buck (misfire?, not sure what to call it) under load – specifically going uphill. I’m assuming this is due to the engine because it’s never done this before and I recently touched it. 🙂 No new CEL codes. I can also reproduce this issue 100% of the time if I do the stall speed test that’s outlined in the performance issues article. Looking at RPM data over time it’s a sudden drop of around 350 RPM over an average 250 milliseconds. It doesn’t seem to be restricted to a certain RPM range.
Anyhow, I’ll be going over my work – I’ll go ahead and clean up like you suggest while I’m in there.
The vehicle has not overheated to my knowledge. I was entertaining the idea of block testing based on Evil-i’s prior suggestion to consider a wrong installed head gasket.
I have seen the performance issues article. Here’s where my vehicle sits right now – I’ve since checked the plugs and wires (replaced actually with Motorcraft everything, the wires were damaged), fuel filter/air filter was 10k ago, oil level is good, looks normal (I’ve not sent a sample off for testing). The only symptoms I have are the P0420 and engine vibration. Further testing of the cat shows the P0420 is genuinely the cat and not an O2 sensor. Power balance test suggests no misfire. I can’t find any vacuum leaks (although, if there’s any not-so-obvious spots to look I might be missing). Fuel pressure is not a topic that I’ve visited yet. It starts fine after one or two cranks every time. Engine timing has not been checked yet – has a service coming in about 20k miles.
Well, the first tester I thought might have been suspect. There was a little bit of damage to the o-ring around the adapter for the plug threads. It might have ended up mattering more than I thought.
Here’s the results with the 2nd tester:
Cyl Dry (psi) Wet (psi) Cyl 1 171 173 Cyl 2 161 170 Cyl 3 165 181 Cyl 4 169 182 Is the fact that the power balance test I did suggests every piston is equally contributing diagnostically sound to call this engine healthy?
Luckily I can answer that one for you with reasonable certainty. The car is a 3 owner car – myself, my father, and my grandmother. My grandmother kept great records and there was never a head gasket replaced in the first 80k miles. My father’s 6k or so miles is the one spot where I can vouch for records, but I can’t imagine 6k of no oil change would damage an otherwise healthy engine. What I don’t know is if there was a head gasket during that time – I doubt it though.
Would a block tester catch the “wrong head gasket” possibility? I’m also going to repeat the compression test with a different tester, just in-case that one was questionable.
Correct. No dark residue around the tailpipe, or “blue smoke”, or anything that screams “hey dude you’re burning oil for fuel!” There’s a slight difference between the oil dipstick level between oil changes, but I never have had to add any oil between changes (checking weekly).
I did find this, which seems to be copypasta from Ford. The lowest reading being 25% within the highest reading is the spec. According to that, which would suggest that cylinder 3 is out of spec. Still it seems low across the board for what I’ve found on the interwebz otherwise. I’m seeing people report dry compression results on their Zetecs well above 150 psi.
No compressor unfortunately. I’m just a guy in an apartment parking lot. I’ll ask my buddies just to be sure but I don’t think I’ll be able to get access to one.
I was able to get a compression tester tonight. Warmed up the engine, ran the test, and here’s what I have for results. I made sure to have the throttle open during cranking.
Cyl Dry (psi) Wet (psi) Cyl 1 92 120 Cyl 2 113 121 Cyl 3 81 120 Cyl 4 93 120 I’m not nearly experienced enough to interpret the results here. I’m leaning toward run it until it dies one day, but some more eyes would be appreciated. From what I’ve been able to find I’d thought I’d expect to see something like burning oil, but I don’t lose any noticeable amount of oil (on the dipstick anyhow) between changes.
Oh yeah. It’s great. As Eric said in a video (don’t remember which one), “make the machine your bitch”. 😉
The two rubber mounts are honestly fine. There’s no visible cracks in the rubber and they’re solid. There’s the hydraulic mount that I’m not sure exactly how to test. I found this test and the vibration nearly completely gone at idle when I jack up the engine. I obviously wouldn’t be able to tell going down the road until I replaced that mount. I’ll have to hold off on that one for a couple of weeks because Ford is really proud of their engine mounts and the aftermarket ones suck (any review I can find on them have them going out after months or weeks).
I’ll do a compression test tomorrow and see what I come up with. Thanks again 🙂
I picked up a new set of Motorcraft plugs and wires and installed them. No change in the vibration but I earned some feel good points.
Here’s the well of that left-most plug,
They all look like that.
For the curious, this is the damage to the original wires that I suspect let water in,
The left-most plug belongs to this wire.
