• Welcome to the Contour Enthusiasts Group, the best resource for the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique.

    You can register to join the community.

So my car started rough...

Tony2005

Addicted CEG'er
Joined
Jun 18, 2005
Messages
6,579
...this morning thanks to the teens weather. After about 20 minutes of driving just as I felt it was smoothing out, I had to "gun it" as I needed to merge in. Guess what happened? Flashing CEL light for 5 seconds, then CEL on. Got to the office and had the code read. P0303 and pending P0174. Did not have time to check and it was too cold to do anything. Erased the code and will deal with it later if and when the codes show up again.

Anyone want to take a shot at diagnosing this? I'm suspecting bad sp wires (106K miles) and some sort of vacuum leak due to a brittle plastic or rubber tubing. :eek:
 
I debated whether to start this thread as I knew I would be getting comments like these :laugh: .

But yeah, I will check it out tomorrow, as the forecast is a high of 56 F. I'm due for a PS Steering Fluid (ATF Type F - Ford specs ESW M12C33) "recycle" too. :eek:
 
I had a vacuum leak about a month ago.

The accordian plastic dry rotted and caused a leak. About the same mileage as yours. Mine had a leak at 104K

It gave me a lean code though (P0171).

I cut the area out and patched it with heater hose and clamps.

Has worked out fine so far.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, diagnosis, etc. :cool:

So after having 8, ons and offs, between lunch time and getting home (which was quite a bit of city as well as highway driving), I plugged in the code reader again. "Passed" according to Actron CP9135. I will still go ahead with SP wires replacement but the P0174 is probably an anormally due to the teens type temperature this morning (as well as the added vibration due to me "gunning" it). :)
 
most common reason for a cylinder #3 misfire is either a spark plug wire or coil pack. Im going to have to stick with my guns and say its a spark plug/wire problem. As for your system too lean code, I bet its pending due to your misfire, but that wouldn't really make sense to get a lean code along with a misfire... If you are getting a misfire and a system lean code I would say... Clean the MAF first and foremost.
 
Nah, I'm not going to do anything about the one time occurance of the "pending P0174". As I mentioned earlier, after erasing the codes this morning and driving a lot this afternoon, I had a "Passed" condition according to the code reader. I will change the SP wires, just because I think it is scheduled maintenance interval (and if the coil goes later, when I don't know, it will be time to replace that too.;) )
 
Tony, I've got a new set of Taylors I was going to send back to AJUSA as they weren't my problem. If you want them, let me know, I can ship them to you instead. I think they were like $42 or so. PM if interested.
 
Thank you for the offer but this boy is Mr. Stocko. I will just get some stock OEMs from Bill Jenkins.
 
Back
Top