2005 Escape surging/misssing

My neighbor called tonight and told me his wifes 05 escape is running rough and will not drive over 35mph and runs rough under power.

It has just over 60,000 miles on it and the check engine light is on but not flashing.

Is there any well know problems with these for this problem?

It has original plugs and not scanned yet as his wife left it at the inlaws house for fear of not making it home.

He said the engine runs smooth at idle but will miss off idle and not go over 35mh:banghead:

It is a V6

Sounds like a coil on plug gone bad. If the engine light is on you can take it to a Autozone or other parts store for a code read. Coil on plug are about $98.00 at Ford dealer. Slightly less at auto parts store,depending on brand replacement.

Each plug on the V-6 has a seperate coil that sets on top and boots over each sparkplug, thus the "coil on plug" name. Or the wire lead to one of the coil on plugs is shorted/bad. The code read will tell you which one is causing malfunction or if it is something else.

Like Johnson said it could be a bad coil. The car owner should be prepared to pay about $300 to replace any of the three coils located nearest to the firewall. (see other thread about changing spark plugs)
The front three coils are easy to get to and can be changed rather easily if you know which one is the culprit.

The car not moving over 35 mph could mean that the ECM has switched to 'safe mode' due to some other fuel or transmission problem.
As you know - getting the codes read will be a great start.
Please post back with what the outcome is, we can use all the "what happened & what fixed it" stories logged here for reference.

Tom