hello,

i know there is alot of information out there pertaining to parts and peices of my issues, and i have read alot of them. i am perfectly capable of doing the repairs just short on time. the only shop in town is booked out 2 weeks, i need my truck sooner.
2006 f150 5.4v 3v 168k i bought it with 150k and it was clean and ford maintained from the original owner. for a while it has been fluttering from time to time during accelleration. last week it started shuttering and missing around 45 trying to accel. no cel. ive read and actually fixed my freinds 08 but replacing cop and plugs. i bought motorcraft plugs and granatelli coils. friday morning it didnt want to start, cranked for a bit then locked up, as if hydrolocked. i let it sit 5 minutes then cranked again and it fired but hesitating and missing like never before. anything passed 3k rpm it ran good no load. i had to drive it and it doesnt want to shift properly, revving way past normal shift points. smoking alot more than normal. hard to tell being 5 degrees out. finally got some codes. bank 2 sensor 1 stuck rich 4 times lean twice. saturday i changed the oil plugs. and coils plugs were not original but were worn enough to visually see. all of the passenger plugs were a nice brown color. all of the driver side were jet black of carbon which follows the o2 cel. i reset it with my gloriifed code buddy and it took a while if at all to come back. so im thinking not an o2 sensor???? it rus rough and will stall from time to time, im to the piont where i wont drive it. i will be replacing the camshaft sensors and vct solenoids tonight, and that one 2 if i have time.
from what ive read phazers will cause a rough idle but once under load at least have some performance. when i accel it the rpms stall out before a shift i cant get anymore power, say wont got over 3200rpm.
when chains and guides need to be replaced whats the symptoms??
been a great truck but id hate to think of a new one. any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sounds like an injector is stuck open. Pull the fuel rail with the injectors up and cycle the key a few times and look for fuel leaking from an injector. Be careful trying to start it when hydrolocked, the rod can bend and you will have low compression in that cylinder. Also expect the cat converter to meltdown, it doesnt take much on these.

 

thats what i thought at first, but why would all 4 of my plugs be carboned. if it was leaking it should make fue; trims go lean making the other 3 plugs less carbon than my passenger side in thoery. i'll definetly check it out!! thanx

 

The misfire will pass unused oxygen out that bank's exhaust. The O2 sensor detects the unused oxygen (remember, its an O2 sensor, not a fuel sensor) and interprets that as too lean. Since only one O2 sensor on that bank, the PCM doesn't know which cylinder(s) are "lean" so the PCM raises the fuel trim for that bank, enriching all cylinders on that bank (and carbons up those plugs).

 

thanks for the clarity, that makes perfect sense of it all. i removed bank 2 rail and found cylinder #7 injector stuck open, releasing all rail pressure when key off. i replaced bad injector, will replace all napa only had 2 on hand. still have crazy shake no power and cant get passed 35mph. now setting lean codes bank one and bank 2.
talked with a few people, mainly people with general knowledge, not vehicle speciffics like this fine forum. but it got me back to basics and they all wanted me to check rail pressure, which without a tee adapter not sure how i could do that. so i went to napa to get a fuel filter for fun and was able to borrow a better code reader that has 25% more data than my innova. ex mechanic behind the counter said check the 02 voltages. bank one sensor one and two both bouncing above and below the .500 volt range. bank two sensor one wouldnt go above .250v when idling but hit .8 after i drove it, but its numbers were slow to change, not like the crackhead sensors that were jumping all over teh place. bank 2 sensor 2 was reading .000 idle .200 when i drove it. got home changed fuel filter, no change. changed bank 2 sensor 1. voltage came up and was changing like the others, sensor 2 still low readings.
went to remove that sensor and noticed bank 2 cat at least 50 degrees colder than bank 1 . so like said above catalytic converters could be plugged. i removed the rear sensor and fired it up. although loud, my idle came back and it sounds to run better.


thanks for the help and i hope this post helps someone else. as many cases as there are out there every malfunction can be different.

two more questions. since cats are expensive. is there a better way to go than oem. especcially if im thinking of doing both, 168k non plugged been running lean... might be time.

second when i got the leaky injector fixed i instantly got a p0351 p0352 p0354 p0355 and p0356 all coil primary/secondary circuit. not sure why this is? i put the old coils back in until i get it running good, but i fear my issue will come back, and i cant return them. i ohmed out to all three points and all 8 coils read the same. they are a 35000v coil, as where i read teh stock are 20000v not sure if its the coils or the cat/misfiring giving me the codes

 

If you removed the REAR O2 sensor, that would be the one after the cat. If the cat was plugged, it wouldn't run better with the sensor removed. But, if your cat was destroyed by the leaking injector's fuel, the cat's innards may have been blown out the pipe and is now plugging up the muffler. Removing the rear sensor would relieve the pressure caused by a plugged muffler.

Also, if this is the same side that had the cooler cat, it might also indicate that there was no innards in the cat.

Just sayin.......

 

the rear 02 sensor is mid cat. i removed it and it does run better. drove it to work got all my power back and idles better. it will load us and hesistate if i leave it in drive at a stop light. when i put it in neutral the off line hesistation was mnimal. i agree with your conpect but it looks like in my case my clog is in the rear of the cat. she sounds pretty wicked when it hits higher rpms. at idle it just sounds like every other 2v on the road with broken manifold bolts..

now just to figure out what to do, spend 100 on universal cats. or spend 500 on a long tube system....