fish321

I have seen a lot of discussion of my current engine problem at Ford-Forum but not at this forum so I thought I would try here as well. OK, the engine began having starting problems as the weather got cold. It sputters, occasionaly dies out,until the engine warms up about 5 min later. I've had it in the shop 3 times now. The engine light didn't go on until the problem was well advanced. They have replaced the IAC, air filter and replaced all 6 spark plugs, without any improvement. When the engine light finally did go on, it gave a variety of error codes including a missfiring #6 cylinder. The mechanic switched the 5 and 6 coil to see if a new error code would pop on #5 but so far the engine light has not gone off inspite of continuing hard start problems.Does any one have any suggestions here ,over and above whats already been mentioned in these forums? It's getting expensive and frustrating. fish

Johnny Mullet

Have the fuel pressure monitored during this sputtering problem. Also, post all the codes found from the scan.

fish321

My 4th visit gives codes p0171 and p0174. Still no resolution. of course it didn't act up for the 4 days it was in the ford repair service. What are these codes? thanks jk

00gtr1

P0171 and p0174 is lean bank 1 and lean bank 2. How many miles on your escape? Those codes indicate your engine has a vacuum leak and that is causing your engine to stall. With those codes that means your engine is sucking in unmetered air and the PCM can't compensate the fuel trims. I haven't seen to many problems with escape 3.0 engines but you problly have bad intake gaskets, and or a bad PCV valve hose. The intake gaskets get brittle in cold weather and don't seal on cold starts. So your technition needs to inspect for vacum leaks. hope this helps and keep us posted.