2010 3.0 CEL

[con_fusion]

On my 2010 3.0L this morning with 105,000 miles, it started fine. I made one stop and it suddenly felt funny and began running rough. Saw that the CEL was flashing. I was only .5 miles from home so I drove it there slowly. Turned it off. Started it again. The CEL was on solid but the idle felt rough. Left it parked, took another car to work.

 

I have a code checker I will connect later to see what codes I have. Are there any special considerations on troubleshooting this?

 

Planning to connect the code reader to see what codes are present. The plugs are only 35K old, the coils have not been changed so I suppose that might be a possibility. If a coil is bad, I assume all should be replaced at the same time. My concern is I have seen situations like this where the PCM was bad and coils were replaced and went bad again. So I want to make sure I check things in the right order.

 

Thanks! 

[bbf2530]

3 hours ago, con_fusion said:

On my 2010 3.0L this morning with 105,000 miles, it started fine. I made one stop and it suddenly felt funny and began running rough. Saw that the CEL was flashing. I was only .5 miles from home so I drove it there slowly. Turned it off. Started it again. The CEL was on solid but the idle felt rough. Left it parked, took another car to work.

 

I have a code checker I will connect later to see what codes I have. Are there any special considerations on troubleshooting this?

 

Planning to connect the code reader to see what codes are present. The plugs are only 35K old, the coils have not been changed so I suppose that might be a possibility. If a coil is bad, I assume all should be replaced at the same time. My concern is I have seen situations like this where the PCM was bad and coils were replaced and went bad again. So I want to make sure I check things in the right order.

 

Thanks! 

 

Hi con_fusion.  Guess I forgot you were already a member here. I replied with some coil, PCM information over at FFC. Just to add...if the CEL is flashing, drive it as little as possible until it is repaired, preferably only to a shop or Ford Dealer located close to you.  You can do further damage to the engine and/or catalytic converters.

 

Hopefully one of our tech members will jump in here.  Good luck.

Edited March 15, 2019 by bbf2530

[bangster]

Get the codes, and go from there. As mentioned if it is flashing the misfire is bad enough to cause cat issues in a short period of time if not fixed.

 

Once you get the codes, if it is still a misfire on a specific cylinder hopefully in front, switch around coil and plug and or injector and see if the misfire follows one of them. Solid CEL and running rough can be more than a specific cylinder misfire. Look for water/coolant in the spark plug hole, wiring issues, plug boot, etc.

[con_fusion]

23 minutes ago, bbf2530 said:

 

Hi con_fusion.  Guess I forgot you were already a member here. I replied with some coil, PCM information over at FFC. Just to add...if the CEL is flashing, drive it as little as possible until it is repaired, preferably only to a shop or Ford Dealer located close to you.  You can do further damage to the engine and/or catalytic converters.

 

Hopefully one of our tech members will jump in here.  Good luck.

 

Thank you. Here's a little more info. I ran home at lunch to put the code reader on to see what popped up.

 

Under stored codes it has - P0204 Injector Circuit/Open Cylinder 4.... ☹️

 

Under pending codes it has -

 

1/2 - P0204 Injector Circuit/Open Cylinder 4

and

2/2 - P0304 Cylinder 4 Misfire Detected

[bangster]

At least it is accessible without needing to remove the intake manifold since it is the passenger front cylinder.

 

That code is pretty straight forward, do you live where there are rodents that like chewing on stuff? I don't think that the gen 1.5 Fusion is notorious for PCM driver issues for injectors. YOu can look for obvious signs of damage to the wiring around the injector, you can switch it with the next one and see if it follows.

[con_fusion]

1 hour ago, bangster said:

At least it is accessible without needing to remove the intake manifold since it is the passenger front cylinder.

 

That code is pretty straight forward, do you live where there are rodents that like chewing on stuff? I don't think that the gen 1.5 Fusion is notorious for PCM driver issues for injectors. YOu can look for obvious signs of damage to the wiring around the injector, you can switch it with the next one and see if it follows.

 

Thanks. There were no obvious signs of wiring problems. I was able to slip my skinny fingers around the fuel rails to unlock the electrical connector on the #4 & #5 injectors. After checking the diags (KG5) from the service manual it said the resistance across the injector connectors should be between 11-18 ohms. I got no reading on the #4 injector. I checked the resistance across the connectors for the #5 injector and it measured 11.5 ohms which was expected.

 

At this point, it looks like the #4 injector is bad. Part is not too expensive but I would have to remove the intake manifold and fuel rails to replace the injector. I suppose this would be pretty expensive at the dealer. If I do tackle this I'm wondering if I should change the plugs. Not sure if it would be worth it to replace the coils also, that might be overkill. Maybe it would be best to just replace the injector and plugs.

[bbf2530]

22 minutes ago, con_fusion said:

 

Thanks. There were no obvious signs of wiring problems. I was able to slip my skinny fingers around the fuel rails to unlock the electrical connector on the #4 & #5 injectors. After checking the diags (KG5) from the service manual it said the resistance across the injector connectors should be between 11-18 ohms. I got no reading on the #4 injector. I checked the resistance across the connectors for the #5 injector and it measured 11.5 ohms which was expected.

 

At this point, it looks like the #4 injector is bad. Part is not too expensive but I would have to remove the intake manifold and fuel rails to replace the injector. I suppose this would be pretty expensive at the dealer. If I do tackle this I'm wondering if I should change the plugs. Not sure if it would be worth it to replace the coils also, that might be overkill. Maybe it would be best to just replace the injector and plugs.

 

Hi con_fusion.  The plugs should be changed at 100,000 miles, according to the maintenance schedule. So if those are the original factory plugs, definitely change them while the intake manifold is off. 

Also keep in mind that it could still be the PCM, as it was in the case of my 2007 MKZ (explained in my post over at FFC). In fact, I think it was the #4 cylinder in my case also. I'll see if I can find the paperwork.

 

Keep us updated and good luck.

[bangster]

Since you ohmed out the inject itself and got an open (not the connector that goes to the PCM, right), I think you are correct in that is the likely failure.

 

The intake manifold is designed to come off fairly easy, and isn't doesn't take as long as you might think. Certainly replace the spark plugs! You will also need the upper intake gasket set. If it is your thing, you can find plenty of YouTube videos on removing the intake on the 3.0 in the Fusion (seemed like all I could find when looking for one for my 3.5 powered Sport).

 

I would not replace the coils, they are not wear items that need regular replacement. They can go bad, but I would rather have OEM 100k coils than new aftermarket ones. I have 320,000 miles on 6 of 8 coils on one of my cars, 2 went bad from coolant leaks shorting them out.

[con_fusion]

2 hours ago, bangster said:

Since you ohmed out the inject itself and got an open (not the connector that goes to the PCM, right), I think you are correct in that is the likely failure.

 

The intake manifold is designed to come off fairly easy, and isn't doesn't take as long as you might think. Certainly replace the spark plugs! You will also need the upper intake gasket set. If it is your thing, you can find plenty of YouTube videos on removing the intake on the 3.0 in the Fusion (seemed like all I could find when looking for one for my 3.5 powered Sport).

 

I would not replace the coils, they are not wear items that need regular replacement. They can go bad, but I would rather have OEM 100k coils than new aftermarket ones. I have 320,000 miles on 6 of 8 coils on one of my cars, 2 went bad from coolant leaks shorting them out.

 

Thanks. It was the injector itself I ohmed. Any reason to think all injectors would need to be replaced? Or is this kind of a rare thing?

[bangster]

It is likely a rare occurrence and I would just replace the one.

 

If it was hours and hours of labor maybe replace them all, but I would just replace the one that is bad, they generally do not go bad completely like this.

[con_fusion]

An update to my situation -

 

I replaced the one bad injector for cylinder 4 and everything went well and the car is running fine. A couple of things came up that I might rethink if I have to do this again for any reason. I paid a bit more getting the part from the dealer vs. ordering on Amazon. Amazon prices were ~ $33.00 per injector.

 

- Of course I had to remove the upper intake manifold to get to the fuel rail and injectors. Even with instructions, the tricky part was figuring out I needed to detach the EGR valve from the bracket that goes to the intake manifold and remove two bolts under that area for the manifold support bracket. The PCV vent hose was a pain trying to get it undone from the top of the intake. A good set of clamp pliers to free up both hands would have been nice.
 

-Where the injectors are, there is a well with a gap between the injector and the edge of the port which allows dirt to get in there. Next time I need to use some compressed air and blow that gap out really well before removing the fuel rail and injectors. I was able to clean the dirt off where it had collected around the lower O rings. Then I had to carefully wipe down in the injector port to remove residual stuff.
 

-Speaking of O rings... The injectors have what looks like a slightly smaller blue O ring on top and a slightly larger red one on the bottom. I purchased the recommended Motorcraft O ring kit (10 pcs) which is supposed to replace both the upper and lower injector O rings. They were black and appeared to all be the size of the upper blue ones and not the slightly larger red ones on the bottom. I was envisioning replacing all of the bottom ones since they were removed from the injector ports. Since there was this size issue and the red O rings seemed in good shape, I just cleaned them, oiled them slightly and didn't replace them. Hopefully that won't cause problems later.
 

-I replaced my spark plugs at the same time and I noticed the plugs I removed had a yellow dot on the tip. I read somewhere that they paint them at the factory to mark if the item were the original plugs. Does this mean those plugs were the originals? Cause I have a work order when they supposedly changed them at about 70K while my car was still under the prepaid maintenance program. Here I am assuming the plugs were changed out when they may not have been.

 

Anyway, all in all, it took me longer than someone experienced doing this process but I'm glad things worked out and the car seems to be running well now.

 

Thanks

[bangster]

Yes, usually only the OEM factory installed spark plugs have the painted dot on the end. Sometimes it is only for some cylinders (ones that are waste spark, for example) or all of them.

 

Slightly over 100k miles on the plugs is close to the end of their useful life, but they still should function well enough. I lost a lot of the vibrations I saw in the rear view mirror when idling when I replaced mine, can't say any performance increase, and didn't drive it enough to compare mileage, but it had to go up slightly.

 

Glad you got it all done, and while it might have taken longer than you expected, it was probably well worth your time and effort to do it yourself. Since I have the 3.5 and the upper intake is different, I couldn't have steered you to some of the differences, but there seemed to be plenty of YouTube videos for the 3.0 that probably mentioned these things. I would rather read someones writeup than watch a video (like reading yours would help for sure) but sometimes a video helps more.