Those lean codes again

[Tinovolpe]

I hope someone can guide me here as once again my fustration level is starting to rise with this car. On my 2001 3.0 DOHC with 140000 miles I had a persistent cylinder one misfire so finally got around to changing the coil, plugs and wires. Solved that problem. But now I get a lean code bank 1 and 2 everytime I start the car cold. After it warms up and I clear the codes it runs fine (just a hint of rough idle but on cold start very rough). Now when I took the UIM off along with everything you have to disconnect to change the plugs and coil I used new UIM gaskets, put new o-rings on the injectors and did as much cleaning as I could. I doubled checked all my hoses and even used RTV sealant to make sure I got tight seals at the hose connections. PCV valve and hose are only 6 months old. Cleaned MAF sensor and EGR valve. Still getting lean codes on both banks and rough idle on cold start. Any ideas. Did I mess up those old injectors? Should I change the EGR valve (was pretty cruddy looking)? Maybe a new fuel filter? (its original). I didn't change the lower manifold gaskets but didn't think I needed to since I didn't remove the LIM. Also I saw some oil in the intake runners. Where is that coming from, the PCV valve?
Any guidance would be appreciated. Really starting to lose my patiance with this car

[Tinovolpe]

One more thing I forgot to mention. My Iphone scan app showsd a long term fuel trim of 24%. I read on another site that it should read +/-5% and when it's reading that high on the positive side then iot mean a lean condition. Is this correct?
Thanks

[tempfixit]

Originally Posted by Tinovolpe

One more thing I forgot to mention. My Iphone scan app showsd a long term fuel trim of 24%. I read on another site that it should read +/-5% and when it's reading that high on the positive side then iot mean a lean condition. Is this correct?
Thanks

Yes , you have a vacuum leak and it is dumping fuel to compensate for the unmetered air.

Here is a site that will help you understand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gJo...oy4alB2WXJCIqA

Look thru his videos as there are others that help explain fuel trims more.

Hope this helps

[Tinovolpe]

Thanks for that link. Kind of confirms that I have a vacuum leak. Question is now how to find it. Where do I get a smole machine?

[tempfixit]

Originally Posted by Tinovolpe

Thanks for that link. Kind of confirms that I have a vacuum leak. Question is now how to find it. Where do I get a smole machine?

Check this link out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMok2...gOq9Lo8QUGJSQi


Others have stated to take the air hose off the throttle body and cover it so the smoke cannot escape there. Make sure that the rippled air hose does not have any cracks in it.

Hope this helps

[Tinovolpe]

That gives me an idea. I could use one of those holloween smoke machines that my kids have. Just have to get it out of the skulls mouth and into one of the vacuum hoses. I'll let you know how I make out

[tempfixit]

Originally Posted by Tinovolpe

That gives me an idea. I could use one of those holloween smoke machines that my kids have. Just have to get it out of the skulls mouth and into one of the vacuum hoses. I'll let you know how I make out

I have often thought about that idea but do not have a machine to try.

Yes I would be interested on this works.

[Tinovolpe]

I tried to use one of those holloween smoke machine by attaching a clear platic hose to the nozzle and feeding it into on of my vacuum hoses. Fired the thing up and soon realized that apparently in order to make smoke the hot smoke liquid which is sprayed out of the nozzle needs to contact air to turn to smoke. In the confines of the platic tubing all I got was liquid which filled the tube. I shut it down before any of that crap got into the intake runners. Only way to make it work is to figure out a way to have it hit air to turn to smoke and then funnel it into the intake. Have to think about that one.

On another subject, the fuel injectors for this car have two orings. Are they both the same size? Are they interchangeable? And when I went to change them all six of the clips that hold the connector onto the fuel injectors snapped from old age and heat. Can I get replacement connectors to splice in place of the existing ones? Wouldn't want to buy a whole new wiring harness, that's for sure.

Thanks

[Tinovolpe]

Just to update everyone I took another weekend out of my life and tore the whole intake apart again. This time I removed the lower intakes and those gaskets were pretty crushed so replaced those and then ended up replacing 3 of my injectors because when you pull them out of the full rail they have this tiny plastic ring right above the top o ring and they tear real easy. Those things come with the injector. I don't know how important it is to the operation of the injector but I wasn't taking any chances. Put the whole thing back together again (3 times actually because I kept having injectors leaking around the o-ring. They were super tough to seat properly). Changed the fuel filter for good measure also. Car runs pretty good now, no codes and more imprtantly my long term fuel trims have dropped from 25% to around 8%. Car idles pretty smooth so I'll call that a success and move on.

[shorod]

Great, thanks for the update.

As an FYI, some of the fuel injector seal kits include the plastic ring and are available from the parts stores without buying whole new injectors. I found this out a couple years ago when replacing the supercharger on a GM 3.8L V6. I'm not sure if they are available for any other engines, I was surprised to find they were available for the GM at the time but fortunately have not had a reason to dig further.

-Rod

[Tinovolpe]

I looked at a lot of seal kits online and none of them seam to have that little plastic ring. One seal kit had 4 parts two gray o-rings, a whitish opaque o-ring and a blue pintle cap. Must be a universal kit that handles many different type of injectors.
By the way after a few days of driving now my long and short term fuel trims are hovering around +/-5% so looking real good. I'm happy.
Thanks everyone for all the advice, hope this can be of use to others.

[Tinovolpe]

WEll unfortunately I have an update to all this. After changing the ignition coil, spark plug wires, spark plugs, fuel injectors, and upper and lower intake manifold gaskets I solved all my misfiring and lean problems. Or so I thought. I keep getting an intermittent cylinder three misfire. I could be on the highway for 20 miles and the car runs fine, then pull into a parking lot and as I put it into partk it will start running real rough. Sometimes this happens at a stop light. A lot of times it will clear up after a few minutes. If I turn the car off then restart after 5 minutes it runs fine. I looked around under the hood and saw that the #3 spark plug wire was bent at a severe angle against the wiring harnesss coming off the spark plug boot. so I rerouted the wire under the harness and that seemed to fix the problem, for a week. This morning after driving about 15 miles on the highway I pull into my doctors office and while sitting in the parking lot, in park, it started misfiring again. I quickly plugged in my scanner and sure enough, #3 cylinder misfire. Then the car stalled. After 10 minutes started the car and it ran fine all the way back to work.
So do I still have a bad connection somewhere? Is the new ignition coil defective? And how can a one cylinder misfire stall my car. When it happens it sounds like the car is running on only 3 or 4 cylinders. It actually putt putts. Honestly after all the work I did to fix this I don't know what to do next.
Thanks

[65comet]

I've got about the same symptoms on my Expedition, but along with #3 misfire I get a variable cam sensor code. There is a TSB from Ford for those symptoms on the expy, that if it isn't the cam sensor (or cam position solenoid), it is the alternator. After heating up it will start fluctuating voltage so much that the computer messes up. And the first code to start popping is #3 misfire because of the way the software was designed. May not be related to yours in any way, but that is the exact same condition that I go through. Just mine continues to worsen and start adding more codes. The thing is, I did originally have a bad bank 2 vct solenoid. It had a knick in it that would not let the internal piston move. Replaced both and things were ok for a couple of days.

[Tinovolpe]

So I'm guessing you still have this issue? Of course I can go down the route of start changing parts but I hate to do that...again. It's true that I never get the issue until the car has been running a bit. Guess I could check the alternator voltage. I thought about changing the cam sensor but once again I hate to just start changing parts. Considring how unbelieving rough the car runs and stalls with just a one cylinder misfire code it's got to be something more than that.

Thanks

[65comet]

Yeah, just got back from camping trip (700 miles down to Tennessee) on Saturday. Started acting up each stop for gas and got codes read down there at Advance Auto. First was cam sensor code (I've tested the sensors) then misfire #3 followed by 10 other codes. I already knew about the TSB and the parts guy there said he wasn't going to print them out, he was 100% sure it was the alternator with all the times he's seen it with all the F-150's down there using the same engine. I decided to wait till I got home, so I'm taking it off this coming weekend and getting it tested. There are reports they will sometimes test fine after cool down. I might try a junk yard one if the new are costly and this one doesn't test bad.