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

    You can register to join the community.

Duratec Misfire

rickl said:
I checked and the ground strap is attached to the coil pack. Here are a couple of things to note:

1. Before I changed the plugs and wires, the car ran like crap and I was getting p0301, 302, 303 codes. None of this changed after replacing plugs and wires. The car still runs like crap and I am still getting the same codes. It seems like the problem may be somewhere other than plugs and wires.

2. I can remove any one of the six plug wires from the coil pack and the idle changes significantly. The change in idle does not seem to be any different whether I pull a wire from bank 1 or bank 2 of the engine. The plugs are firing, it just seems like they are not firing at the right time. Spark tester shows strong spark from all 6 wires.


Thanks for your input!
Click to expand...

Almost sounds like half the coil pack isnt working correctly.

The firewall side wires are somewhat difficult to snap over the plugs, make sure they "click" when installing.

Anything abnormal about the exhaust, Smells, color? You mentioned cracking wires etc... The wire harness connnectors include the wires for the injectors which could possibly cause the vpwr/signal wire which connects to all 3 injectors on that bank to be shorting
 
Right now I'm dealing with a bad injector wiring harness. The Crank sensor and cam sensors have really bad wires and they are on they gray connector.

Pins 5 (violet/white) and 6 (brown/white) and 12 black/white are for the cam position sensor.

Pins 9(blue/black) 10 (white/red) and 11 (red/brown) are for the crank sensor.

I would do a more thorough check of your wiring harness. If yours is like mine which is likely. It is probably shorting right where the sensor wires come out of the plastic injector
harness sleeve.
BTW both of the sensors have a piece of shielded wire that I believe is grounded hence the three wires for a two wire sensor.
 
ctmystique -- good ideas...thanks. The wires on the cam sensor looked good as new. The crankshaft wires had been repaired by the Ford dealer a few months ago and they described the problem as a broken wire on the crankshaft sensor. I did not find any broken wires, but both wires had absolutely no insulation left on them from the connector back about 2". On top of that, the connector was only halfway on to the sensor! I thought maybe I was onto something. The dealer did a halfhearted job of trying to apply some electrical tape, but the the two bare wires were touching each other and they were touching the bare wire from the third (ground/shield) wire. I cut the shield wire back about 1/2" until I found good insulation on the two wires and wrapped each wire with electrical tape, then wrapped the whole harness (about 4" back from the connector with electrical tape. Applied some di-electric grease and plugged it back onto the sensor.

No change...still p0301, 302, 303

How can I tell if the camshaft sensor is bad? Also, is it possible one of the exhaust manifolds / cats is plugged?
 
ctmystique -- How did you discover your injector wiring issue? Is there a way to check the injector wiring without removing the UIM?
 
Well I figured if there was some cracking of the insulation visible there had to be more. I picked up some shielded two conductor wire at radio shack. She's all back together and running great.
 
rickl said:
ctmystique -- good ideas...thanks. The wires on the cam sensor looked good as new. The crankshaft wires had been repaired by the Ford dealer a few months ago and they described the problem as a broken wire on the crankshaft sensor. I did not find any broken wires, but both wires had absolutely no insulation left on them from the connector back about 2". On top of that, the connector was only halfway on to the sensor! I thought maybe I was onto something. The dealer did a halfhearted job of trying to apply some electrical tape, but the the two bare wires were touching each other and they were touching the bare wire from the third (ground/shield) wire. I cut the shield wire back about 1/2" until I found good insulation on the two wires and wrapped each wire with electrical tape, then wrapped the whole harness (about 4" back from the connector with electrical tape. Applied some di-electric grease and plugged it back onto the sensor.

No change...still p0301, 302, 303

How can I tell if the camshaft sensor is bad? Also, is it possible one of the exhaust manifolds / cats is plugged?
Click to expand...

Was this on the sensor end? Check both ends. Also mine was cracked throughout the entire wire under the shielded part with hairline cracks so I just changed the entire length.
 
Update: Most of the problem was solved by replacing the engine wiring harness. After that, I was left with one misfire code. No compression on that cylinder and that was resolved by replacing a broken valve spring. I have spent WAY too much money and time on this car. Ford has disappointed me once again. Anyway...I hope this helps others. I believe many of the misfire posts on this forum are probably caused by the very poor quality engine wiring harness on these cars. Thanks to everyone that offered suggestions...Rick
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top