Hi, I have a '95 Escort station wagon (my son's car) with a 1.9L engine, manual tranny. About six months ago, out of the blue, the power just dropped off. It has gotten much worse since then, When driving it and you floor it (or at least accelerate), it feels like someone put their hand over the carb (old time term), or over the air cleaner inlet, or plugged off the exhaust pipe, just runs like a dog (no power). Going up even a small hill in town requires low gear. But it would probably do 100 on the interstate, if you had a long, flat road (maybe a slight downhill slope, ha). No missing, really, just no power. Tried a bottle of injector cleaner that didn't help at all. Well, finally I've started trying to diagnose the problem. No 'service engine' light ever came on. I have had this car to two GOOD mechanics in town, and now finally it has been at the Ford dealer's garage for over a week and they are tearing their hair out. Between all three, I'm sure they have checked everything at least twice. We have put in new plugs, wires (twice,sad to say), fuel pump, swapped ignition modules from a known good car. Checked exhaust back pressure, mass air flow sensor, compression, cyl. balance, etc, etc, etc. I'm running out of troubleshooting money.
Allow me to take up a little more space, if I could. There is a lot that I'm not sure of, as the mechanics themselves would say they checked everything (but give no detailed list), but here's to the best of my recollection. The car starts and idles fine, but while driving it sometimes runs poorly. (This is addition to the extreme lack of power). Also, the gas mileage is about half of what it was previously, down from about 35 mpg to about 20 mpg.
Mechanic #1
At that time, it had a miss also, so he put in new plugs and plug wires. That cured the miss, but he didn't have time for further analysis, except that he said it could be:
A) exhaust pluggage
B) dirty injector. (wanted to run a complete injector flush deal, whatever that was)
C) said that he cleaned and (recharged or something) the MAF sensor
D) nothing showed up his big computer, but he did say that the plugs were badly burnt, like it had been running lean for some time.
Mechanic #2 had it for a few days and checked a bunch of stuff, then checked the fuel pump pressure and said it was bad. We brought the car home and put in a new fuel pump from Napa. Still ran the same. Just had a new fuel filter recently, so didn't change it again. We took it back to him (he rechecked the pressure and said it was still low pressure), he found out that there was a bad Schrader valve in that test connection, replaced it, and pressure was ok, so probably the old fuel pump was ok, too. Left it there and he checked the following:
A) put it on his smaller computer and said the ignition all looked fine.
B) said the exhaust pressure seemed fine at about 1# backpressure when they revved it up.
C) not sure if he checked the MAF sensor
D) checked the timer belt and timing
E) said he checked everything else, but don't have a complete list.
F) said a dirty injector will usually cause a miss, so didn't go further
G) said it could possibly be a bad ignition module, but didn't want to just replace it, as for the expense and it did check out ok on his machine.
Mechanics #3 (Ford Dealer) Also, kind of hard to say ALL of what they checked, as they sure don't say much, but I do know that they checked the following:
They did put on new plug wires (again) and:
A) fuel pressure check = ok
B) ran injector test = ok
C) spark duration relative compression test = all ok
D) exhaust back pressure = ok
E) regapped plugs = ok
F) install new spark plug wires = ok
G) test coil pack = ok
H) test ignition module = ok
Costs so far:
Mechanic #1 $130
Mechanic #2 $ 200 - 250 my estimate
Ford dealer $ 384
Fuel pump $ 85 - we installed
Grand Total $ 799 - 849 (so far)
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, still runs as bad or worse than before.
Allen
95 Escort lack of power
Re: 95 Escort lack of power
Escort Update 01-16-04
Re: 95 Escort lack of power
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