I suppose before I do anything else I will attempt to pull codes using the paperclip method. However, driving it into town just now it finally acted up the way it was before I parked it. It started idling rough, bogged down and died when coming to a stop to pull it into my friends driveway. What's weird is it seems to run OK as long as my foot is on the gas. I can keep it from dying that way. I restarted it and at that point, it continued to run rough in idle and in gear. I put it in park and let it idle but was curious about the PCV... I wanted to with it to see if it would make the car run better or find a vacuum leak, so I pulled it out of it's little hole and at that point there was smoke of some kind coming out of the hole it sits in... It didn't make any difference in the way the car ran from plugging or unplugging the valve. It ran py like that for about 30 - 60 seconds then it died again. The smoke coming out of the PCV hole smelled like rich exhaust to me, and it near smelled like raw fuel when the car died, almost like it was flooded.
You think that would be enough to cause the aforementioned symptoms? The lines going to the PCV seem good to go... should I replace the valve? It does seem to sit in the hole in the valve covers rather loosely. Is it possible to replace the rubber ring the PCV valve slips into?
I think this thread may have been abandoned... but I just sprayed all over the vac lines and around the throttle body base with carb cleaner with no idle change. It only changed when I hit the PCV valve.
BTW as far as any plug or distributor problems, keep in mind all that stuff is brand new, including the ignition module. I am going to try that spray bottle test though., and I'm going to get some carb cleaner and perform the vacuum leak test.
I forgot to say, since resurrecting it from the garage, it has yet to die coming to a stop. I have also noticed that after driving it, parking it for a few minutes and starting it back up to drive again, it starts funny. Like it fires up a little more quickly than it should, then bogs down for a split second then runs normal, like it's loaded with fuel or something. Before it always had a consistent second or two of crank time. Sorry if I sound like a rambling buffoon, I'm just trying to describe all the things it does as best I can.
OK so today I got a chance to check some things out and take the Cougar for a couple of real drives. Foe, I took a drive with the vacuum line to the EGR plugged and overall it did not seem to make a difference, although I do feel like the motor seemed a bit more responsive. Everything down around the throttle bottle looks good far as I can tell... no leaks. I remember now when the car was at the first shop, they mentioned they had replaced a gasket in the throttle body but never specified which one. I think they had it off checking the fuel pressure if I remember correctly, and also stating that at some point a fuel stream shot up into the air when checking for this which seemed to surprise them. I also seem to remember them pressure testing the cylinders which checked out OK as well... but remember these are the guys that never thought to check the timing and diagnosed a bad motor.
Thunder Chicken, your post intrigued me due to the fact that the thermostat was replaced, so I inspected the coolant temp sending unit and definitely found some less than stellar wiring at the connector. There is about 3/8 exposed wire at the base of the connector which has been unprotected long enough to where it looks old and brown. I definitely feel I should get the connector replaced, and the sending unit is like 8 bucks so I'm going to replace that also. Maybe this will help with the rich condition? I can tell the mileage is still poor after driving it a couple of days.
When driving it today it seems something is robbing the motor of it's power. I noticed today when pulling out onto the hiway and accelerating I could feel a drop in power right after it shifted into second gear. It's strange, like you can just feel the whole motor bog down. Would this be a condition of being fed too much fuel? Also, when driving at a constant hiway speed at times it does this weird little stutter/surge thing... almost like there is this split second drop in power or fuel supply or something that feels like a brief stutter when driving it that goes on and off. This happens upon acceleration as well, and seems to prevent the car from shifting into third sometimes. It almost acts like something is clogged. Does that make any sense?
I definitely have a paper clip, so I'm going to try this pulling codes with a paper clip thing... but I'll have to look the instructions over a bit, to me it seems sort of complicated.
J, yes those are the symptoms currently... but the dying while coming to stops is somewhat intermittent. It doesn't die at every stop. I will be able to check/test some more things out in the next couple of days. And Thunder Chicken, I am definitely going to look into that.
Dude, you would be disappointed in humanity if you knew what I went through with shops trying to get this car fixed. It went through four different repair shops, and exhaust shop, one independent guy and six months of hell to get where I'm at now. That's why I'm here trying to get some help. Everything was fine until one day it died on the highway coming to a stop and would not restart. At that point, I towed it to the shop I had taken it to for a few previous repairs, tires etc. Those guys had it for three weeks before they finally threw in the towel and told me it needed a new motor. Now I'm not a genius, but I did do some QC work at a dealership and I've never heard of any car running just fine for years as a daily driver and then one day all of a sudden the motor goes bad and that's that. So at that point I spoke with my brother who is fairly in the know about Cougars as he has had three, and he talked to his mechanic buddy who used to own a Ford dealership who suggested checking out the timing gears as they were apparently made of nylon and would wear out right around 85,000 - 90,000 miles. Armed with this knowledge, I took it to said independent guy who found that indeed the teeth were worn way down on the cam sprocket I believe, so that was replaced and the timing reset. Now I went to this guy per recommendation from a buddy at work, but I would label him a backyard mechanic who caused as much hassle as he fixed. He set the timing too low on top of leaving bolts loose in the crankcase... so that led me to another shop. These guys were the parts throwers. They did find some vacuum leaks that were fixed so my heater controls would work again, and they did the majority of work listed in my initial post... on top of redoing the entire timing job again because the backyard mechanic guy left the two bolts that anchor the cam sprocket loose. You could slide it back and forth a good inch, inch and a half... not to mention he didn't get a gasket for the job, he just sealed the crankcase up with some sort of epoxy. It was great. Anyways, after a couple of months dealing with the parts throwing shop fixing some issues, and trying to diagnose others that were supposedly part of the problem then doing work that didn't change anything, I took it to another shop. This was the best luck I had, and where the EGR, ISC motor, thermostat and 02 sensors were replaced. Now, during the course of all of these shops visits and repair work, that is where the rich exhaust odor came from. It did not have this problem prior to the whole ordeal... so either it is a result of faulty work on somebody's part I'm guessing, or it's a problem that developed after having something replaced. The car has been sitting since June as I worked at a radio station and had transportation provided to me via an endorsp00get. Well that is over now and I am reviving my dear Cougar once again. I have only taken it on a couple of short trips in the past few days as the brakes need to be bled and the system refilled before I get too carried away, but it seemed to run OK aside from a couple of weird instances after I drove it for a few minutes and parked it, let it idle and the idle kicked up significantly but only momentarily then kicked back down to a normal rpm. It does still have a rich exhaust odor upon start up, but it also seems to kind of come and go as it idles... but always present upon start up. That's where I sit with this beast as of right now. It's got 99,000 miles on it and seemingly plenty of good days ahead if I can just pinpoint what the hell happened.
Aren't you glad you know how to work on your own cars?
First of all, I want to thank you guys for taking the time to help me out on this thread. I think that is really cool. I can tell you already care more than some of the techs at some shops I've gone to, haha. The problem is I am by no means a mechanic, and a lot of this work I can't do myself. I have one of those Haynes Manuals for Cougars and T Birds, but not a lot of knowledge or experience working on engines and certainly not any tools other than wrenches. I've been at the mercy of repair shops through this ordeal... but I do feel there is some of these things I can check myself. I do think I'm capable of taking the throttle body off and checking it out. I pulled the vacuum line off the EGR yesterday. The line looked OK but there did not seem to be much vacuum coming from it. Is this supposed to be constant? And would you be able to feel the vacuum by putting your thumb over the end of the hose with the motor running? Jcassity, I will check out your DIY stuff for sure, and just FYI the converter is brand new as that was one of the things I had replaced during what I will now just dub "the Era of Repair."
I will have to check that out, but in general from the top the vacuum lines seem to be in good shape. IDK if it included the line to the EGR but the vacuum lines were checked and a few replaced after my vent controls stopped working. The car does not smoke, and starts right back up if/when it dies. It's been sitting a few months as I had other transportation recently but today I took it for a drive. It still had rich exhaust especially at start up and idle, but it ran OK and didn't die on a short trip. The idle seems a bit unsteady to me personally, always has been I think, and it does seem to lack power a bit. The last codes scanned were for a TPS and EGR control solenoid to which both were replaced.
