I have been reading your threads recentley and decided it was time to join in on the discussions. I have a 1998 Ford Windstar 3.8 liter. It has almost 200K miles on it now. For the most part, it has been a reliable vehicle throughout the years. The most I have spent on non-preventive maintenance work was some front end work a couple years ago (about $900). I hate the thought of having a car payment so I am going to run this van until it can't run anymore. I have had the common problem of the door ajar switches that most of you have seemed to have had. On this, I spent some money to change a couple out only to have it re-accure. My wife's solution was to pull all the interior lamps from the sockets and put a flashlight in the glove box.
Now to the reason I am here. The "check engine" light has been on for quite a while now. I have had it in for service but my mechanic just seems to be grabbing at straws as to what to repair. He replaces a part or two. Re-sets the light and sends it back to us only to have the light re-appear a short time later. Now (yes, there's more) the check engine light flashes
intermittently. When this happens, the engine acts like a vacum hose was pulled off and runs rough. It will run this way for a while then return to normal. This goes on for as long as the car is running. I used to be able to cure this somewhat by filling the tank with premuim gasoline. Now it only makes the problem re-accure less frequentley.
Reading through the other threads here it seems as though it may be the EGR or DPFE sensor that is the culprit. I also read where the EGR ports in the engine may be clogged with soot. I have ordered my Hanes manual for this vehicle and am ready (I think) to jump in head first to figure this problem out as it seems my mechanic never will.
The information I have gained from you all has been a great help so far and I thank you all. It is amazing the commonality of everyones problems and the lack of Ford not fixing these problems with the release of each new model year.
Back to reading some more. Good luck to all in getting you Windstar repaired!