Mondeo cut out/misfiring ideas needed!

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PROBLEM NOW FIXED

Hi all,

Some of you may be aware of the problems I have had with my car, over the past year and its now got to a point where if I don't manage to fix it by early 2011, I will have to get rid of it as long journeys make me feel stressed - I always feel I'm going to end up on the hard-shoulder.

Car:
Mondeo 2002 1.8 duratec 132,000 miles (previously owned by my Dad who pretty much only ever used this car on motorway to work, so the engine should be in excellent condition.)

The Problem:
Car will misfire 2krpm+ happens every couple of minutes usually but sometimes I can do a 2-3miles journey and not have any problems, its worst on the motorway, it feels like it just misses one cylinder and then is fine again and is especially bad on a long hill with slight gradient.
This I put up with, until about a month ago when car cut out completely, was driving along motorway, all of a sudden all dials go to 0, odometer and temp readouts blank out and interior light came on; after about 10secs of slowing down, I dropped a gear for a bit of engine braking to pull onto hard shoulder and as I lift up clutch the engine immediately restarts and is back to normal. Wondering what had just happened I continued my journey doing about 50mph in nearside lane and travel for about another mile and it happens again - this time the engine doesn't restart and I pulled onto the hard shoulder. Restarted car and all was back to normal.

I'm convinced the misfiring and this cut-out are connected.

I have replaced obvious things, HT leads have been replaced twice, coil pack, spark plugs, few other bits as well.

Fault codes been read (was nothing on there at all)

Had local independent drive and check whole car over and he found nothing. He couldn't get it to misfire but then again, he just went around town - not on motorways when it happens most. He also rung a ford garage who had never encountered that problem.


I really hope somebody can help
 
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OEM ford, so were HT leads and then yesterday I replaced HT leads again with some aftermarket, made no difference :(

Edit: The other things that were replaced for a different problem that are possibly worth mentioning are:

Coolant Temperature Sensor
Emission Sensor
Fuel Filter
 
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That was checked, seems fine

When the car cut-out, it was like stalling, and if you stall in my car, the interior light comes on so I think that's possibly why it came on...
 
I would look at all the vacuum hoses, possible air leaks form the inlet tract, exhaust gas recirculation system & the pulse air system before having anything to do with the electrical/fuel side of things (do they still have that on this model as a carry over from the older zetecs??)

Where would I look for these hoses?

As opposed to reading error codes how about getting it on a proper diagnostics system so that sensor values can be read?

Do I need to take it to ford for this?
 
If i can find anything picture wise on the web, i'll post it up here with arrows & things!:D
http://www.talkford.com/

I don't know loads about the mk3 mondeo, the above is a very good forum!!. The engine in your car is an evolution of the one that was in mine, a lot of things will be very similar.

Nope, you need an OBD2 diagnostic tool & the software. ScanXL, obd-diag for a laptop or for a mobile mobile phone there's OBD gauge for win mobile or OBDroid for android phones

I have one of these: http://digiobd.co.uk/shop/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=29780

I did actually post this problem on talkford and didn't get a single reply :(

That diagnostic stuff looks pretty cool, I wouldn't know what to look for though :(
 
Sounds like I would have to get someone to do it for me so I would have to pay labour. To be honest though, I just don't think it can be that - seems like an odd thing to go wrong. Obviously I don't know for sure but problems with vacuums seem much more likely.

It's looking like I'm going to have to get another car :(
 
Just an update to this thread:

I had the car serviced (it's overdue, I've been looking at getting new cars so I hadn't bothered) and the problem went away completely! At least it did for 2-3days - then it just did the odd misfire and now on the 4th day its back to misfiring as it did before.

Does anybody know what on earth is happening? Are the spark plugs getting ruined somehow?
 
So it's been about 1.5months since the problem has been fixed, thought I'd do one final update on this thread with some pictures to show what's wrong (I found it fascinating).

I took it to ford for one final last check on it and after an 'advanced diagnostic check' they said there was a problem with inlet manifold, but unlike any other ones he had seen my one wasn't rattling at all.

Then 3days later it sounded like this:


Obviously I had to make a decision fast, so I decided to get it fixed and asked Ford to keep the old parts (my Dad offered to pay because he felt sorry for me :D)

When I got it back, engine sounded new, car felt quicker and there are no misfires!

Here are some pics of the part:


img0122ma.jpg

img0123etj.jpg

img0124zr.jpg

img0125zv.jpg

img0126o.jpg


You can see on pot 3 the yellow butterfly flaps are damaged and on pot 4 its gone all together.

The thing on the left I assume is connected to the throttle so when I put my foot down, fuel either flooded into the engine and caused a misfire on pot 4, or didn't get enough petrol because the butterfly flap is jammed half open on pot 3.

But anyway I'm so pleased its fixed :D
 
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