I have a problem that is driving me crazy.
I have done several search's and found a few threads I thought might pertain to my problem, but alas nothing has helped.
Here's my story and the things I've attempted to fix my problem, hopefully one of you guy's can help.
I have a 2000 SVT which I have owned since it rolled off the dealers lot. The car has been flawless up until 3-4 weeks ago when it developed what seemed to be a dead miss in the engine. Shortly after that the CEL came on and stayed on, however a couple of days later the CEL would start flashing rapidly then stop for awhile but stay constantly illuminated then start flashing again.
My first thoughts were that the plugs needed changing(still had the factory originals) because after all the car now has 41,000 miles on it. I purchased a set of Autolite PP764's gaped them at .054 and still had what I percieved was a miss. Next I thought the plug wires was worth investigating because they were the factory originals as well. I set out to find the bad wire by removing each wire one at a time to see which one would not affect the engines idle thus telling me which wire was bad. Well each and every one of the wires would most deffenetly cause a dead miss that affected the engines idle, that started to make think that what I percieved as a dead miss originaly was actually not a dead miss. I checked the plug wires like this 3 times with the same results each time.
While I was standing there scratching my head I noticed white fluffy corosion on my pos battery terminal, so I thought what the heck and cleaned the terminal. I had the battery disconnected for 10-15 minutes while cleaning the connections and pondering just what might be the problem. I then reconnected the battery and started the motor, geuss what. The miss was completely gone and the engine was running just as good as it ever has. I then took the car for a test drive and it was running very good but after 7 minutes of driving the miss returned and shortly thereafter the CEL starts blinking like mad again. However this time the CEL did not act like it did previously, now it would rapidly blink many times then just go out for a few minutes then start blinking again. I pull back into the shop and remove the battery cable again waiting 10 minutes before reconnecting it. I start the motor back up and it was running perfect again so off I go on another test drive only to have the miss return again after 7 minutes of driving with the CEL blinking rapidly at me again so back to the shop again I go. Now I'm standing there looking under the hood when I notice that the battery has been leaking all along the back edge of the top, not recently but it had been sometime in the past because of all the white powdery residue it had left.
I then buy a new battery and install it however this time when starting the motor the miss is still there and resetting the comp does not make it go away anylonger, plus the CEL does not flash or come back on no matter how long I drive it.
Still not convinced that the original plug wires are good I buy a new set of Autolite Professional wires and install them, the problem is still there. I'm really stumped at this point because after pulling the plug wires 1 at a time it just does'nt seem so much like a miss to me anymore, but instead more like a sputter.
The original plugs I removed looked perfectly normal and none of them looked as though they were not firing. I realy do not know what think now as I still have that miss or sputtering after changing all those parts but no longer have a CEL either blinking or just staying on.
Hopefully someone here has some idea's that will help before I snatch all the hair out of my head.
