Good morning all, I'm new to the forum as a poster, but have been reading this and other forums off and on over the past 2 years, and they have been very very useful to me.
I'm chasing a herd of problems right now, for several months, and am really starting to lose my ability to think through all this. The more I read, the more frustrated I get at not understanding it.
[edited to add... 2002 Windstar, 150,000 miles, I think it's the 3.8li, but I don't know for sure.]
For two years now, we've had the ever-abundant 0171/0174 banks 1 and 2 too lean codes. We've taken it several places, and best we can get is about 2 months before it comes back, so we hurry and get emissions done then. Then it's right back again. But let's come back to this, it's the lesser of the 3 evils right now...
For several months, I have been dealing with "Check Charging System" and "Check Transmission" errors. They do not seem to be connected (meaning I don't have a charging system error and then immediately a tranny error). The tranny only throws errors every 20 minutes or so, while the check charging error pops up off an on, no pattern. Sometimes every couple minutes, sometimes once every 10 or so. Can't see a pattern. When CCS goes off, I lose the LCD message screen, and sometimes my dash lights, but I don't see any loss in power, I never lose my lights, there's nothing like a "brown out" as I would describe it. Does seem to happen more when it's cold first thing in the morning, but that's not always the case.
For the CCS error, I replaced the alternator with a new Remmy from autozone. Didn't fix it. The battery tested OK, but to rule it out we replaced it too. Didn't fix it. Autozone warrantied out the alternator and we tried a 2nd one. So new alternator and new battery in the same day. Still didn't fix it. It's not caused us any problems (like stalling out or can't start), but it's just annoying to have that thing going off all the time.
Now to the tranny. The tranny was a total rebuild 2 years ago when we first bought the van. This summer, on a road trip climbing some real steep hills, we got the check tranny message. Checked fluids, made some phone calls for advice, and then went on our way. Everything fine. Coming back from the trip, same thing, but then climbing the one last steep hill out of the valley, message changed to "tranny overheated". So we pulled off at the top, and sure enough, smoke or steam was coming out of the trans fluid nozzle there under the hood. Smelled like burned oil, was a bit nervous. Let it cool off, took it easy into the enxt town, and had a trans shop look at it. Codes said the torque converter was bad. He said we could keep it below 55 and drive the last hour home and deal with it at our own shop just fine, which we did. Our shop warrantied everything, and replaced the TC at no charge to us, so that's awesome.
Through the next few months, we saw no improvement. We'd still get the CT error, but never the overheating one... we took it back to the shop again and again and again, and they've replaced valves, a valve body, two more torque converters, and who knows what else. I know the last trip in they just said screw it and tore everything out, and put in a whole new tranny. Still behaves the same way, like nothing's been done. Everytime they've pulled it apart, they see no damage, no burned parts, no burned fluid, they can't see a thing wrong with it. They're into this probably 100 hours in labor, and who knows how many thousands in parts.
I thought maybe then a computer might be the issue, and causing both problems. I took it to ford dealership, and said the computer checks out fine, but they did see codes for the above transmission problems as well as the too lean engine codes. They told me they needed to fix both of those before they could see what else was wrong.
The bottom line is, none of these seem to be threatening the safety of the van, it appears that I'm not going to burn up the tranny at least, but I just don't know... is there a bigger problem here, and all these other things are just symptoms? I can't wrap my finger around the problem, and that's what's bugging me. And now I'm on the recall list for a potentially cracked axle, so on January 4th I'll find out about that I guess....
Anybody seen such a bevy of big problems all rolled in together like this?
Thanks!
Farns