engine acting strange, to lean because of fuel pump problem??

slackinoff

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Took out the injectors and brought them to a shop for testing.

That's a really good idea even if it ends up not being the problem. When I finish collecting parts for my DOB kit, I am going to have the injectors I buy (used or new) flow tested....or either purchase new from a company that does it.

I see it as way too critical for a healthy and safe running engine.
 

groundpounder

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What is the short and long term fuel trims showing? Are they in alignment with the AFR gauge? Could be your wideband has gone bad?
 

Scrat

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Since you said the engine is running hotter and sounding different, is there a way to check your o2 sensors? Maybe a clogged cat converter if you still have them installed?
 

redfirepearlgt

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Although the AFR Gauge says that the engine is running lean the exhaust smells like fuel. This gives me mixed feelings about really running lean.

So would it be possible that an injector isn't working good (stays open) and that the engine gets to much fuel instead of to few?

The Lambdasensor is only installed on 1 side of the exhaust so it can only read one side of the engine.

Took out the injectors and brought them to a shop for testing.

If you have no spark on one or more cylinders you will get a lean condition. WHY? Because there is no combustion to burn mixture so the O2 will remain. As well this would explain teh rich smell of the exhaust because again the fuel has not ignited within the A/F mixture. As the unburned mixture passes the O2 the O2 (which detects O2 presence) senses the o2 and this the lean condition will be present. I suggest getting out your laptop, uploading SCT datalogging software (assuming you have an SCT tuner) and set up to datalog misfire on all eight cylinders. Also observe Lambse bank 1,2 and AFR bank1,2. Determine which bank is lean and then target those cylinders for misfires.

This would be a beginning from an electrical aspect..............

One last thought from a mechanical aspect. Are you hearing any odd knocking or loud tapping? With the odd running AND teh hot condition you are noting you may have a failed Cam Phaser. I went through this with my 2005 GT. No CEL's just a rough running, no power, and a knock from up high.
 

philip_mustang

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Small update.

Got the injectors back and 2 of them weren't good they said. They cleaned them ultrasonic and they were ok after that.
Just installed them and it makes no difference at all.

But it seems to be going worse as I now start to hear some strange sounds in the air intake. It sometimes seems like some kind of howling.
Don't really trust it enough to let it run and hit the gas to keep it running.

I'm going to have it towed to a shop and let them work it out because I don't want to risk to ruin my 2 year old engine.

I could have tried some new spark plugs but can't find them anywere here.
They even can't order them from their suppliers.

It sucks being in Europe and having an addiction for US cars :( No shops here where you can simply go to and get the parts needed and not a lot of shops with knowledge of these cars/engines.

Could be wise to get me a small stock of my own. I still have all the OEM stuff that has been replaced by other things but my OEM spark plugs aren't the same as in this B302 engine.
Even my engine oil, the 10w40 full mineral, can't be bought here. Only fully of half synth. So I got enough of that for 5 changes :)

If you have no spark on one or more cylinders you will get a lean condition. WHY? Because there is no combustion to burn mixture so the O2 will remain. As well this would explain teh rich smell of the exhaust because again the fuel has not ignited within the A/F mixture. As the unburned mixture passes the O2 the O2 (which detects O2 presence) senses the o2 and this the lean condition will be present. I suggest getting out your laptop, uploading SCT datalogging software (assuming you have an SCT tuner) and set up to datalog misfire on all eight cylinders. Also observe Lambse bank 1,2 and AFR bank1,2. Determine which bank is lean and then target those cylinders for misfires.

This would be a beginning from an electrical aspect..............

One last thought from a mechanical aspect. Are you hearing any odd knocking or loud tapping? With the odd running AND teh hot condition you are noting you may have a failed Cam Phaser. I went through this with my 2005 GT. No CEL's just a rough running, no power, and a knock from up high.

That explanation sounds really logic. Haven't thought of it that way.
We tested the spark plugs to see if they weren't burned through on the inside and they all seemed ok. They are only in for max 5000 miles I think.
They didn't seems to be in a bad condition and looked good. On the other hand things can always go bad.

I do have logging software because I did a lot of logging to get my tune finetuned. But I'm getting to scared right now to mess up things further by keeping it running and possibly making it worse.

And since you mention the cam possibility ... I'll get back to that a little lower.

Can you re-calibrate your particular wideband?
Has the engine thrown any codes?


The engine hasn't thrown any new DTC's since this problem occured.
BUT ... I've had the PO345 (camshaft sensor malfunction) for a while now. my 'regular shop said it was caused by the alternator. This DTC started when my second 200amp PA performance was installed after the shaft broke of the first one.
They swapped the sensors but no difference. It idled and drove perfect. You could clear the code and it stayed away while driving untill the car was restarted. Therfor they assured me it was caused by the alt because this was a known problem (and a TSB) for thsese cars.
That second alt also started to do some crazy stuff. Sometimes it just stopped working and I got the "check charging system" warning.
Then I had them changed the alt under warranty and they hooked me up with that powermaster one. It works but the DTC PO345 keeps coming up.

Since you said the engine is running hotter and sounding different, is there a way to check your o2 sensors? Maybe a clogged cat converter if you still have them installed?

I assume it was running hotter because of the lean conditions. (atl east thats what I found of the internet) Haven't checked the 02 sensors but the cats are only 1 year old. Did an exhaust upgrade with kooks LTH and high flow green cats.

What is the short and long term fuel trims showing? Are they in alignment with the AFR gauge? Could be your wideband has gone bad?

Haven't look at those yet. But like I said higher on I don't really trust in anymore.

Another thing I noticed today is that there is some kind of residu in the top of the oil filling cap. Its most likely caused from mostly driving short distances with the mustang but at this stage I could expect everything.
 

MjDubai

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I know this might be a stupid question, but do you usually clean your engine bay?
 

philip_mustang

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I know this might be a stupid question, but do you usually clean your engine bay?

Depends on what u call cleaning. I go over it with a cloth occasionaly to keep it a bit clean but I don't use any products to clean it all up.
No waterhose or high pressure if that is what you are refering to.

Most parts you see aren't that old so it still all looks good.

But those 3 weeks that it stood still, it was outside where it normally sits in the garage. So moist could be possible but very unlikely due to only a bit of rain.
 

MjDubai

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because using a water hose usually or mostly damages the alternator and the sensors. because it happened with me, where my alternator got cooked and it also damaged my crankshaft and camshaft sensors.. Thats why i asked. Anyways it might be some other issue then.
 

06monera96

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Do you still have your charge motion control valve operational?
They do seize up due to carbon build up and cause all kind of issues!
 

46addict

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If you have no spark on one or more cylinders you will get a lean condition. WHY? Because there is no combustion to burn mixture so the O2 will remain. As well this would explain teh rich smell of the exhaust because again the fuel has not ignited within the A/F mixture. As the unburned mixture passes the O2 the O2 (which detects O2 presence) senses the o2 and this the lean condition will be present. I suggest getting out your laptop, uploading SCT datalogging software (assuming you have an SCT tuner) and set up to datalog misfire on all eight cylinders. Also observe Lambse bank 1,2 and AFR bank1,2. Determine which bank is lean and then target those cylinders for misfires.

This would be a beginning from an electrical aspect..............
This is good info. So are you saying a misfire can result in an unburnt fuel smell along with a lean AFR reading? Do you know offhand what PID logs misfires? Is it the misfire count?


What is that? Never heard of it before!
The charge motion plates are "throttle valves" that sit in the intake manifold runners to speed up air intake velocity during slow engine speeds/part throttle driving. It's also there to help fuel atomization during part throttle to maximize gas mileage and street driveability. At wide open throttle the valves open up to allow unobstructed airflow. I would rule out any ignition misfire issues before looking at the motion plates.
 

philip_mustang

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The charge motion plates are "throttle valves" that sit in the intake manifold runners to speed up air intake velocity during slow engine speeds/part throttle driving. It's also there to help fuel atomization during part throttle to maximize gas mileage and street driveability. At wide open throttle the valves open up to allow unobstructed airflow. I would rule out any ignition misfire issues before looking at the motion plates.

So is this then the butterfly valve in the throttle body?
Assume not since you talk about the intake manifold. Never knew there were some kind of valves in the intake manifold. I should look into my OEM one.
Then this must be inside the Edelbrock supercharger housing, right?
 

Wes06

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If you have an aftermarket manifold I doubt you still have those butterflies.
They are at the end of the runners where they meet the heads.
 

46addict

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Yeah the intake runner butterflys are nothing new. They are also in the 4v 4.6s.
But I didn't realize your car is supercharged. If it has a PD blower the manifold probably came with "delete plates" installed, ruling out motion plate issues.

Also some widebands require periodic calibration. If you have an Innovate like me and haven't done the free air calibration in the last 3 months, go ahead and do one to rule out false AFR readings.
 
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redfirepearlgt

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46 Addict - This is good info. So are you saying a misfire can result in an unburnt fuel smell along with a lean AFR reading? Do you know offhand what PID logs misfires? Is it the misfire count?

Yes. That is what Banish states in his Engine management advanced tuning book, and when you stop to think about it, it makes logical sense. Why do we call it an O2 Sensor? Because it measures presence or lack of presence of O2 (Oxygen) in the air mixture which is approx 21% makeup of the air we breath. Unless the mixture is ignited the O2 is still there at full strength. Therefore the O2 sensor simply reports what it measures as that cylinder of A/F mixture passes by on its way out the tail pipe. Since the PCM knows the crank position at any given time, ans knows and is commanding the ignition to each cylinder, it can also then determine which cylinder is misfiring based off of that data AND the delay time at which the mixture from given cylinder passes the O2 sensor as it exits. Normal COP failure would be detected from the feedback of the COP to the PCM. But if that is good and say the boot is failing on cylinder 5, that is how a misfire on 5 could be detected. how many misfires on a given cylinder it takes to generate an actual CEL I cannot answer.

I believe if you try using the misfire PIDs in the OBD II portion of the SCT datalog software along with the spark duration in the spark section you could hopefully be able to log this. I was going to try doing this on a friends truck which is misfiring but giving no codes at all a few weeks back, but when we tried to hook my laptop and SCT up to his 2002 Superduty (5.4 2V) the laptop decided to take a crap due to a failed update in Windows. I ended up having to restore the whole original image when I got home to remedy getting the datalog software to work again, so I never tried again since that laptop and software are my lifeline to my Mustang when it comes to tuning and datalogging it. Remember you can use a married device on a compatable EEC t olook at and reset CEL's and datalog through the datalog Gen II software download on a laptop.

So hopefully the PIDS I saw in the config list (without car available) of PIDs are compatible with EEC-V and up. Sorry I cannot validate this. Wish I could.
 
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redfirepearlgt

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The charge motion plates are "throttle valves" that sit in the intake manifold runners to speed up air intake velocity during slow engine speeds/part throttle driving. It's also there to help fuel atomization during part throttle to maximize gas mileage and street driveability. At wide open throttle the valves open up to allow unobstructed airflow. I would rule out any ignition misfire issues before looking at the motion plates.

I always forget about these things on the 3V. They did away with them on the Coyote, and my 05 didn't have them after the Saleen twin screw was added.
 

JeremyH

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I always forget about these things on the 3V. They did away with them on the Coyote, and my 05 didn't have them after the Saleen twin screw was added.

They were added back to 15+ coyotes fyi. On the 3v they were driven by an electric motor on the new coyotes they have two pneumatic control actuators on the back off the manifold, they look just like wastegate actuators and use a solenoid to change airflow to the actuator to open and close the runner valves.
 

redfirepearlgt

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They were added back to 15+ coyotes fyi. On the 3v they were driven by an electric motor on the new coyotes they have two pneumatic control actuators on the back off the manifold, they look just like wastegate actuators and use a solenoid to change airflow to the actuator to open and close the runner valves.

Good to know. Thanks. Was unaware of that refit.
 

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