I have been battling a problem for about a year now. The FORD dealer and independent garages have not been any help, just expensive. My issue is that from time to time my car will get into a stage where I will get a complete engine cutout at 3250-3300 RPM. This occurs in all gears and at all different speeds.
When this occurs the CEL light will flash on and the tachometer will drop to zero. This will last for .5 seconds or so. Then the tach will return to normal. If I remain at this RPM it will continue to occur causing the car to buck wildly. When I accelerate quickly though this zone I can get past it with only one buck and it runs fine.
I have replaced the fuel filter, run several bottles of injector cleaner through it, used HEET (in case of water), and 8 months ago the mass air flow sensor was replaced. At the time the dealer thought that this was the problem. When I have the car hooked up to the diagnostic equipment though the computer does not say there is anything wrong. Recently, I noticed that I could get the failure to occur when is was in neutral. Do you think that if the diagnostic equipment hooked up to it when it occurred, the error would be found? Let me know if you have ever heard of this happening to someones car.
Keith
96, Countour SE, V6, 5 Spd
