94 escort 1.9 rough start poor idle, then death

okay so.. i am going to start from the beginning. I have a 94 escort LX. The 1.9 engine. I am by no means a mechanic but I know a good deal of auto stuff and I certainly make sure to do things like change oil, check fluids etc.
My car had been running like a champ, up to 30 mpg this summer. It has 140 K miles on it. The other day I drove it all over town, and then I went on a drive and it started to sputter and bog down.
I was low on gas so i figured thats what it was. I stalled on my way into the gas station. Filled her up, put in that lucas fuel treatment stuff as I often do, and the problem persisted. It sounds like its not firing right. The engine is very loud, considerably louder than it was earlier. It also seems to shake around in the compartment a lot more. It was raining pretty hard when this happened, so I tucked into a coffee shop and prayed it was bad spark wires or something stupid.
The next day the problem persisted, Very hard start, but will crank over very easily, then it runs like sh**, and eventually stalls. If it is in Park or Neutral it may run for a little while, it might even idle okay, just very loud and rough. Once it is engaged in Drive or Reverse it wants to stall immediately.
I started my diagnosis with the battery. It's new, and I went and got it tested to make sure. It tested good, and there is a new Positive Terminal Lead i just put on a half a year ago or so. The negative lead appears okay, and because there is no corrosion and no drop off in lights or other electrical I figured that the starting and charging cirquits must be good.
I then "dark" and "wet" tested the coil pack. First just looking in the dark for a spark and then spraying it with water to see if I could see one, I could not. I used a spare spark plug wire to test the current wires, swapping them one by one, but nothing got better.
There is a whole in the exhaust by the muffler, but the rest of the exhaust appears intact, and I don't think a clog is very likely, however until I get the car home tomorrow and jack it up I can't really tell.
I checked the air box for oil and the like, this engine spits some oil that-a-way in general but it is minimal. Air box and Filter check OK. PCV should be OK. Disengaged the whole airbox and parts of the PCV hoses and stuff while running and nothing seemed to get better.
I then thought fuel, and sprayed starting fluid into the air intake while it was running and it seemed only to get worse, it bogged down and stalled.
So now it appears it's time to get serious. Tomorrow I will check for spark @ all of the spark plugs ( They all should be good, a tune-up was done by me last year, and I got good plugs and wires. ) If im having problems there, maybe replace the coil pack and see if it is malfunctioning but didnt show up. I will check for fuel pressure at the shraeder valve (although Im not entirely sure how to yet, and shouldnt the starting fluid test show better performance if that was the case?) I will pop open the oil fill cap and valve cover if neccessary and see if I can get a good look at the valve train while cranking to see if I have a timing slip. (But if I did, wouldn't it not run at all?) I plan on renting out a code reader and plugging it in to see if anything turns up.. No check engine codes are currently on, but I'm not even really sure if that light works in the first place, so I better check it out to make sure.
HELP ME!!! hahahaha.
-Um... some stuff I might have left out is that the transmission is a bit crappy, but very functional at last use. it used to leak, but lucas oil seeemed to stop most of it.
- When the engine gets bogged down, it seems like when you give it more throttle it just runs worse. It runs best ( but barely ) at idle. As soon as it is under load at all it just wants to stall out.
- Aside from a small miracle I will have it towed to my house tomorrow.
Thank you sooooo much for helping me. I love this site, and have already poked around a bit in the escort forums here. I will check this tomorrow morning and in the afternoon and keep everyone updated on my totally fun day. :smokin:

Welcome to the Forum! You mentioned that it had 140k on mileage. Have you replaced the timing belt? It sounds like you have a broken tooth on the timing belt. Your Escort calls for belt replacement every 60,000 miles. With 140k I assume it's been replaced at least once by now. What you describe sounds like the valve timing is really late. When this happens it will idle fairly well, but will stall out under a load. I'm thinking that what you describe sounds like bad plug wires as they will cause a miss under a load, but you say you have checked that. If they were bad, you would have seen arcing when you did your dark and wet test. If it was a case of fuel starvation due to a plugged filter or injectors the motor would have responded well with the starting fluid. I think it is a broken tooth on the timing belt. There are other things that could cause your problems. They are ignition timing off, major vacuum leak or no compression on one or more cylidners.

Did you pull each of the spark plugs? Check if one of the plugs/cylinders is soaked with gas. If so, its probably a bad coil pack, and you're basically running on 3 cylinders. Which means replace the coil pack. Happened to me.
Good luck.

Okay well I just got done working on the girl for the day and I would like to catch everyone up with what I have done..

@ last post, the car would run maybe for a little while, but then would stall out under load,, etc.. I thought it might be fuel, so I sprayed the starting fluid in.. and yadda yadda yaddda.. Hasn't really started since. Figuired I just flooded out the cylinders and it would come around..

Since then I looked at the timing belt and thought that it had jumped. I thought this because of the mark on the crankshaft pulley and the TDC stuff and etc. It looked like it had jumped. So I replaced the timing belt without any significant snags.

Went to start up the car after checking everything, and it will not start. It still sounds just like before,.. Not starting, it cranks, really sounds like it wants to fire up, at some point maybe you can even here a detonation or two, and then it just goes back to cranking..

I checked the fuel injection fuse, I think I checked the fuel pressure at the schraeder valve. ( Just pushed down on it and got fuel, but am not sure if I should be doing this while cranking ) However when I pulled the plugs they were all soaked with gas so I dont think this is my issue anyway...

Also before I moved on to the timing belt, I pulled one of the spark plug wires and grounded it against the engine while my dad started the car... and there was a spark.

So... Anyone have any bright ideas? I think I might go try and replace the coil pack, hoping that maybe its firing wrong? It should work fine..
.. Dont really know where else to look.. any thoughts about other ideas like CPS and etc. ? This car was running like a champ just two weeks ago I really dont want to throw it out.
Many Thanks
-Houston

Welcome to the Forum! You mentioned that it had 140k on mileage. Have you replaced the timing belt? It sounds like you have a broken tooth on the timing belt. Your Escort calls for belt replacement every 60,000 miles. With 140k I assume it's been replaced at least once by now. What you describe sounds like the valve timing is really late. When this happens it will idle fairly well, but will stall out under a load. I'm thinking that what you describe sounds like bad plug wires as they will cause a miss under a load, but you say you have checked that. If they were bad, you would have seen arcing when you did your dark and wet test. If it was a case of fuel starvation due to a plugged filter or injectors the motor would have responded well with the starting fluid. I think it is a broken tooth on the timing belt. There are other things that could cause your problems. They are ignition timing off, major vacuum leak or no compression on one or more cylidners.

The ignition timing on these cars is all controlled isn't it? There arent any adjustments that you can do that I am aware of.. If it were a compression problem would I be able to test that with a standard compression guage without having the engine warmed up? I dont know that it is a vacuum leak, but I suppose it is possible... Ill try and look into that tomorrow. When I pulled the timing belt, it looked a little worn, but not in danger of breaking, and there were no missing teeth.

I think you are on the right track.
When I started reading the post I immediately thought you had a vacuum problem causing the engine to suck air and die (and you still may).
By the end though, I think it is quite possible you have a bad head gasket or some other problem preventing compression. Get yourself a compression tester (I think you can borrow them from the parts stores) and come back with the results.
If you are certain you set the timing correctly (and it is very simple to just line up a couple dots), and you have spark and fuel... the missing ingredient is compression.

If you aren't getting spark, replace the ignition module if it has one. Does it have cap and rotor or a four plug coil? I think the ignition module can be tested at some parts stores.

I don't know why I was thinking you had verified you have spark.

Settle that problem before digging into the head.

You will not get spark if you forgot to plug in the crank sensor after doing the timing belt. It is located at the top edge of the crank pulley, just below the oil filter.

I did verify spark, sorry with all of the writing it probably got a little bit cluttered.. I verified spark by removing one of the spark plugs, sticking it back into the appropriate spark plug wire, and grounding it against the engine block. I had my pops turn the car over while I watched for an arc to jump, and it sparked plain as day. This to me signaled that the coil pack was working properly, but I don't know if they can still "work" without working properly.. All things considered the coil pack is probably working correctly, I was just asking if they go bad but still test good, or maybe if parts of them would go bad, as I hadn't verified spark on every cylinder.. Just on the first one that was easy to get to. :)

In that case, check compression. You probably had a bad gasket that eventually blew.

I would verify the spark on each cylinder and inspect the spark plugs. My Escort had the same symptoms as yours. When I took all the spark plugs out, only one was soaked with gas. Checked the spark, and that cylinder was not firing. Replaced the coil pack, and it ran like new. Good luck.

I found this post - and I was amazed that the problem sounded exactly like the problem I'm having with my '94 escort. But I don't know what was ever determined to be the exact problem. Was it the head gasket? Was the head gasket blown?
I had just replaced the radiator in mine - because it blew off the top pipe where the top hose connects. The next day - the timing belt broke. I replaced the water pump and timing belt. It ran great. But then, about 2 days later - it started running (idling) really rough - then it would smooth out and run great. Then a couple days later - it just started running rough all the time.....it smoothed out for a little - and I was on my way home - and it was going great - then it just crapped out. It will start up - but it's just as described at the first of this post. So, what was ever determined to be the problem? I can probably handle replacing the head gasket....I think I can do that myself.

Your problem sounds like it could be an exhaust leak to the cooling system. I'm surprised you had the radiator failure unless it was weak because the radiator pressure cap should have opened if the pressure got too high from the exhaust gases entering the cooling system. Take a whiff of the overflow tank and the radiator opening to see if it smells like exhaust and maybe gas. You could have a block crack, least likely, a head crack, somewhat likely, or a head gasket leak, most likely. The leak will also make the cooling system burp a lot of gas, spurting into the overflow tank, and making the coolant look brown, bubbly and frothy. If it is like mine, everytime you start it after sitting overnight or awhile, it will start, run rough and eventually clear up with more gas or driving it for a minute. I've haven't tried it yet, but I've heard of success using block, head, head gasket sealers that require removing and rinsing out the coolant and adding to a water mixture and running in the engine. As mine is a v6, I'm not too in a hurry to redo TWO heads!?!

Commonly, you will have more than normal white exhaust with this condition. It may or may not smell like the sweet coolant. You probably would be able to tell which cylinder the leak is at by pulling the plugs, with the cleanest at the leaking cylinder. You can also see if you have a leak by doing a pressure test, but it is not conclusive, because there may be another leak not at the cylinders. But if there is a leak, the pressure test will push more than typically happens after the engine shuts down and cools off, resulting in a much more rough start up than typical. Good luck!

This is all getting very interesting. My escort has ran well - no problems with how it ran at all....really smooth.....at all speed, etc. However, the radiator coolant had turned to brown frothy mud. I had read somewhere that the particular coolant Ford used - would turn to mud after a while. Well, I tried to flush it out - but I never could get it all out. Meanwhile, the car is still running good. Then, one day - my radiator pipe blows off. I had thought also - that if there was that much pressure - why didn't it blow through the cap.....or why didn't it blow a hose? But, when I attempted to remove the old radiator pipe section from the upper hose - I thought I would be pulling a piece of pipe out of the hose....but it wasn't.....it was like only little pieces of it would come out at a time - and it was soft - it wasn't like a hard plastic pipe. Anyway, after that - and after the new radiator.....the brown mud problem was gone. .....then there was the timing belt and water pump.....
Well, I'm leaning toward the head gasket thing. I just moved it a little while ago - and one thing I notice - the brake pedal is really hard......like a huge loss of vacuum. I had checked vacuum hoses earlier......especially for the brake.....but I found no vacuum hose problems.
The part that got me before - was that it would run well....then it would mess up and run like crapp for just a few seconds....then it would be fine. Now, there is no fine at all....runs like crapp all the time and can't be driven down the road. Also, at this point - is where I noticed the exhaust leak-sounding problem - as if the exhaust gasket was blown......but maybe it's the head gasket instead.

So, do or did you have any, some or a lot of white exhaust? Are or were you loosing antifreeze? Pull your plugs? A leaking exhaust gasket could be checked by carefully putting your hand next to the exhaust manifold at the head to feel for leaks. You could also use a piece of hose as a listening device to your ear and the suspected areas of noise. A thread or piece of yarn will work too if the fan doesn't come on or even a candle lit or smoking from being put out.

I haven't had any white exhaust. I was loosing coolant - back before the timing belt broke - and it was evident that the water pump had been leaking - so I figured my coolant loss was due to a bad water pump. At that time - there were no other indications of any problems at all. The car ran great, no exhaust-sounding noises coming from the top of the engine. But now, I'm thinking it's too much of a coincidence that at the exact time it started running like crapp....and basically quit going down the road.....for it to also develop an exhaust manifold gasket leak. I'm thinking it's pointing toward a head gasket leak. One thing I will verify......I will block off the vacuum line where it goes to the power brake booster - just to be certain it's not a bad vacuum leak there (but if it were - I would probably hear it at the brake booster - but I'm not - I'm only hearing what sounds like an exhaust leak somewhere toward the left side of the engine - near the exhaust manifold).