Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting a story about a Intermittent CEL and my SVT

Hey CEGers

About a month ago the first problem came up with an intermittent CEL. Symtoms included deep gurggle @ idle, power band seemed okay. Took it to Ford and they said Spark plugs 1 & 5 went bad and they replaced it.

Second instance of the problem occurred about 2 or 3 weeks ago. CEL comes on and I have loss of low end power, engine is hesitant below 3000. Same sounds as before out of the exhaust with exception of what seemed to be a valve noise or perhaps detonation. The best I can describe the sound as is maybe like a electric spark, like when you're lighting a gas stove. Of course that's the answer i'm leaning towards (confirm?) There's also a rough idle and almost neglagent knocking.

Took it to Ford and they werent' too sure but they wanted to start at my PCM. The initial diagnostic pointed towards perhaps a faulty PCM. I've had a chip in the SVT for about 6 months now and they thought it could be a chip. I removed the chip and still had same problem.

Ford then replaced my PCM. Going home from the dealership, everything running fine till my CEL come on again. Much more knocking this time, thought my engine was going to die.

IS MY ENGINE DYING? Bringing it to Ford again, but just wondering if anybody could give me some insight as to what is happening.

I'd want to know the second CEL you got after they replaced the PCM. I sure do hope they didn't put the wrong computer in there........

Call them and ask them what OBD2 code(s) it's throwing and post them here!

Get the codes, it may just be a position sensor that is bad. Seeing the way some of the dealers work on our cars, I'm not surprised they wouldn't replace the engine to fix a non-working tail light. I would also get rid of the ignition wires, they are junk.

What the he77?

Okay, so I figure today I go take the car out so I can write down a proper detail of what happened after I got it back from Ford.

So why is my car running perfectly fine today? Seriously! No knocking, no idle problems no detonation sounds...

grrr... also my new ecu has a new code MNQ3 so now i have to reburn the chip.