Sterling_Six

Hello all:

Well today the Dreaded P0401 OBDII code came back, and of course this has been a yearly event...LOL...2000 Taurus 3.0L DOHC 24v Duratec

Of course I assumed (as before) it was the DPFe (Delta Pressure Feedback of EGR) and I was Right...this little beauty has gone bad every year for the Past 3 years...So I had to replace it again.

And of Course I did the usual stuff...Cleaned the Egr Pipe, Checked the EGr for Vac...Check the Vac Sensor..Cleaned the Throttle Body..MAF Sensor, check all Vac Lines...etc...and The Pcv...god this has become a annual event...

My Question to any and all is WHY??? Why did they design this to make my life miserable...LOL...

Anyway Have a great day all

__________________
Good Luck and good repairing Sterling_6
"You know, just like in that Book, When Jesus beats up Moses to get Religion!!"

R.S.LOGAN

If you didn't have that to fix , you would only have spent the day enjoying yourself !!!!!!The joys of motoring , glad you got it sorted out o.k .

btlwgn98

Oh dear....the p0401....
I had the same engine on the original battle wagon, a 98 sable. Same thing happened repeatedly. I don't know what you are referring to as the egr pipe, but there is a tiny little passage cast into the air intake manifold that allows air to move. Through from the e.g.r. to the t.b. (or maybe it was the other way around?) Whatever. It's a fishhook shaped passage, and tiny. You need to remove both the t.b. and the. E.g.r. and push through it with a piece of wire and then clean it out with a pipe cleaner and some TB cleaner. Im sorry I don't have pics or a sable to go out and look@ it to give you better instructions. But it is there, and it was the cause of my issue. In fact, after I found it and cleaned it I realized I should not have bought the new e.g.r valve after all, and it had been the problem the whole time. The d.p.f.e. sensor, though, jammed up every year until I found it, thank god for lifetime replacements....
if your dpfe continues to blow regardless of clean and operational valve, solenoid, TB etc, then this is most likely your problem. just look for all of the ports going in and out of the intake manifold around the TB and EGR, and you should see it.
i just found my old post about it, the port, apparently, is half-moon or c-shaped. I can almost picture it in my head. It's there, trust me. look for all the gunk you can find, and start cleaning it out. It should stop the dpfe issue.

btlwgn98

Disclaimer:
This repair of mine was over 3 years ago, and I haven't owned that car for 1 of those years, so please take caution, and be patient as i am digging to the dark recesses of my mind to pull this out.

specifically, you take off the TB, find a "c-shaped" port that will be black with carbon and soot and general engine gunk. mine was a solid block of gunk, so even with the TB gasket off, i thought it was just a stained black part of the Manifold, until i got some TB on there and it began to run......

Spray some TB cleaner in there to break up some of the gunk, and start pulling out as much of it with a wire as you can. Remove the EGR valve, and as you continue to work a small wire (I used a rubber-coated electrical wire, 12ga, with only the end exposed so it could dig into the gunk but was less likely to scratch the metal of the manifold) until you break through the other side (under where the egr mounts, i think....if i remember correctly, or perhaps it was right back into the intake manifold....).

Eventually, so long as you are working through the c-shaped port, your wire will come out somewhere else, covered in all sorts of gunk. Start cleaning it up, and you should never have this problem again.