Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications 3.0L Duratec 3L troubles

Ok, stupid question. Now, I had good oil pressure so it shouldn't be a problem but.......

I'm just wondering IF I should happen to jump a tooth on one of my cams, how far off could I be before I start getting interference? 1 tooth, 2 teeth?

I'm asking because I was at the dyno last night and they had the car running fairly decent. But on one of the pulls, he said it just suddenly stopped making power around 6950 with the rev limiter set at 7100. It sounded like he bumped the limiter. Now, it won't even idle quite right and doesn't rev properly. It's got what seems like a bad miss in it now.

I tried changing plugs (they put coppers in it) back to dbl plats to no success. I'm wondering if it might be the coil gone bad or possibly something in the cam/timing chain system.

I'm at a loss.

The chain will not jump teeth ... it would strip them before doing that. Sounds to me like the best course of action is to have the coil pack tested. Can you isolate the problem to a specific cylinder? If you are misfiring that bad, you should have a blinking CEL.

What where the plug gaps?

Also, what was your Peak HP/TQ before this started to happen?

IIRC you can only be off 1-tooth before you introduce Mr. Valve to Mr. Piston.

1st things 1st - do a leakdown test.

Damnit dale! I'll talk call you later about all this.

Checking plug gap is much easier ... reason I mentioned this is that plug gap is very sensative to idling well. My Explorer's recommended gap is 0.054 and I had them gapped at 0.057 by accident and it idled like crap and felt like it was missing at constant RPM runs. Gapped them down to 0.052 and she runs and idles SMOOTH! Don't underestimate the power of thousandths of an inch when it comes to plug gap!