Marquis help please - Ford Forums

nickkendall · 03-05-2009, 15:13

i bought an 83 grand marquis to drive and all i was told was that it had a miss well i drove it home and changed plugs, wires, cap, rotor and it did not get any better checked compression and it 100+ in all cylinders
i have tried changing igntion boxs and it still acts the same it is getting lots of fuel it is just not able to burn it....it will start and runs very poor it will hit and miss i can pull a couple plug wires off and it will run the same then i checked for spark and when i hit the gas it will not spark right away then it will start again and sometimes a wire will not spark at all for like 15 seconds or so then it will spark again i don't know what to do or check next please help me i need to be able to drive this

ryoder · 03-05-2009, 19:54

Switch your distributer out. Or it might be just the coil inside the cap.

nickkendall · 03-06-2009, 10:31

i just tried differnt coils and got the same effect i have a coil seperate from the cap...i don't know what other parts it could be i've replace everything i can think of
it will run alot better in neutral or park but as soon as its in drive it sputters and dies
i can pull a wire off and it will spark for a while and then stop and not spark for a while then it will start sparking again

thefonz · 03-06-2009, 12:11

Whick coil did you change?
This one http://www.2carpros.com/forum/automo...kup_coil_1.jpg
or this one http://cranecams.com/images/download...207300391).jpg

nickkendall · 03-07-2009, 12:27

i replaced the one that sits by the distributor that the main spark wire comes from...how many coils is there?

thefonz · 03-07-2009, 16:27

The other one is the 'pickup coil' and is inside the distributor.

Jenifer420 · 03-16-2009, 14:16

It is rare but we had to actually change the distributor in ours completely, not just the caps and coils. The whole thing had to be changed.

JRW9900Kluge · 05-02-2009, 07:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by nickkendall

i bought an 83 grand marquis to drive and all i was told was that it had a miss well i drove it home and changed plugs, wires, cap, rotor and it did not get any better checked compression and it 100+ in all cylinders

I am not too familiar w/ the '80s engines (had GM's back then), but 100psi sounds low for an 8.5 : 1 compression ratio engine... When I checked out a bad 4.6L engine in one '96 FCVPI, I was getting 165 to 180psi in the six good cylinders, and 70 to 80psi in the not so good other two... Needless to say, this resulted in an engine swap because I happened to have a donor car available w/ a good engine and a wrecked body. Did you do the compression test w/ all sparkplugs out, elect. fuel pump off and ECM fuse pulled ? And did you do both dry and wet compression tests ? Were the results similar or significantly different, and/or did you notice a significant difference between cylinders in either test ?

Regarding the spark, or lack thereof... are you using an inline spark strobe light or inductive pickup, or did you just pull the sparkwire and use a sparkplug held against the engine block ?? That was fine for testing cars w/ points and condenser, but on newer electronically managed engines, if the higher voltages don't kill you they will probably kill other electrical components around the engine block...

87_Crown_Vic · 05-04-2009, 10:51

i would get a different dizzy to put in.
what kinda cap and rotor are you using? hope you didnt go the cheap way and got something comparable to an Accel cap and rotor kit with the brass and not the aluminum.

Steve83 · 05-05-2009, 00:31

There are MANY things that can cause a miss - not just ignition components. And a compression test isn't to find if the pressure is over 100 psi. It's to compare all the pressures. Read this caption: