Ford Triton 4.6L ignition problems

Ron,

Get yourself a "scanner" that reads OBDII. They are easy to use. If a coil pack is bad, it will tell you, in plain english no less, no codes you have to look up or anything like that. I use the Auto X-Ray products.

The latest engine management software, OBDII (OBD stands for On Board Diagnostics), is amazingly powerful, the amount of engine monitoring it does is tremendous.

It can indeed detect coil problems, Adam's Ford Ranger had a bad primary circuit in one of the coils in the coil pack, and the OBDII identified it. All I had to do was plug in the scanner, read the display, go to the auto parts store & buy a coil, install the coil in Adam's truck. Total repair time, start to finish, 20 minutes. The scanner read something like "high primary resistance cylinder 1 coil". It was a real no-brainer.

George

Thanks George ... greatly appreciated ... it will be a life saver. These vans are costing fortune in ignition problems and I think some how it causes eratic shifting because I think its linked some how electronicly.

Thanks Again Ron

OBD II codes will only be set if you exceed a preset number of misfires per drive cycle or if there is a circuit failure. If you have a marginal misfire you have to go into mode 6 data that is a history of operation. It will show the recorded number of misfires within a specified number of drive cycles. If an injector was bad, it usually occured when the vehicle was new and early production of the 5.4L. The pulgs were a problem but again usually early. Both were redesigned slightly. The coil-on-plug is a different story. They break down after awhile. Ford has a set of clips with leads off of them that go over the coildriver. These then are used with the WDS diagnistic machine to show a wave pattern. This is how they are diagnosed if it isn't a total circuit failure.

I purchased the hand held diagnostic tool ... the error codes on one van was a mis fire in 2 cylinders ... and upon removing the plugs we could see the color of them and it was obvious those two plugs and coil packs were bad. But we replaced all the plugs and 2 coil packs.

The other van read errors on the fuel filter, MAP sensor, and showed a vacumn leak ... we replced the fuel filter, cleaned the MAP sensor and fixed a slightly torn vacumn hose and all is well.

Thanks Greatly for all your help. Cost a helper for 2 days 160.00 and parts 318.00. The last two times these vehicles were in the shop for similiar if not the same problems ..1000.00 each was the bill.

Ron

Ron

Isn't OBDII amazing?