Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General Please take a look... Need guidence.

Well there's 2 minutes of my life gone that I won't get back again.

A better description of your topic and a brief intro might solicit a response in the Problem Forum rather than wasting members' time loading a remote link here to find a complex Cougar problem few could provide guidance on.

Note to all: Topic relates to diagnosis using OBD-II computer software on a Cougar.

Then close it and move on. Simple.

Thanks for your help.

You're welcome.

Settle down horsy I know Jon and his car has been plagued with problems and I understand his desperatness to give the CEG brothern a opportunity to enlighten him on the subject. ITs frustrating when you have a querky problem that can be resolved. A more appropriate post would have just copy and pasted from NECO, but he did this to save precious bandwidth and to keep all the replies together. Here is the problem for those that don't wish to link:

So I plug in my handy dandy obdii software to take a looksey at my car, see if there is anything brewing or a code or anything since my car is not running all that well lately.

As I run down the list of things I come across something that doesnt mean a whole lot to me but seemed odd.

(all at idle)
Shrt FT1 swings between -1 and 3
LongFT1 swings between -10 and -11
Shrt FT2 swings between 0 and 2
LongFT2 swings between -3 and -5

Now Long FT1 is what has me puzzled.. All of these are within a few points except for LongFT1 which seems to be way high compared to the rest. So I say ok, weird but ok.. Move on down the list. Get to the corresponding o2 readouts and find another abnormality.

(all at idle)
02s Shrt 11 swings between .16ish and .47ish
02s Long12 swings between .04 and .05
02s Shrt 21 swings between .10ish and .74ish
02s Long22 was around .57 when I wrote this down.

Now if you notice 02s Long12 is again way out of place compared to the rest of these readouts. It was a rock steady .4 and .5 all the time, while the others seemed to bounce around a whole lot! Does this seem odd to anybody?? It does to me. Ill continue

So I move onto the graphing function of the obdii software.. Plot this sensor against its rival to see what the difference looks like.. Well let me tell ya.. The o2 sensor in question was dead still, flatlined, nothing.. maybe a slight variation here and there, but otherwise dead still. The other o2 sensor was a constant up and down, up and down (which is the right way if I have paid attention to half the posts about o2 sensors).

So what do you all think? Is that o2 sensor 21 dead? I know about pulling other sensors and moving them around to see if its the sensor or the connection, but reaching my stumpy hands up to that 11 sensor is very unlikely! (its jammed up there pretty tight with the MSDS headers right, i cant seem to remember where exactly it is??)

Also incase this helps with anybodys decision on this, i have what seems to be an idle misfire/knock/weird sound.. you mostly hear it out the tailpipes as a louder or different exhaust note here and there. The engine also seems to bounce around at the same time I hear this noise.

Car drives fine otherwise (besides what I though might be an IMRC problem, but may be this?).. My gas mileage does suck however usually get 200-240 miles per tank. .but around 22.5 mpg?

Can somebody please PM/Email/Post any ideas you may have on this problem.

Thanks for reading such a long post! hehe