While driving down the highway at 65mph in my 2001 Ford F-150 5.4L engine just shut off. I did not notice an engine light come on. I shifted to neutral and tried to start it with no luck. I pulled over to the side of the road and tried numerous more times with no luck. While on the side of the road I took out the strader valve on the fuel rail and my wife cranked the vehicle over. No fuel came out. I had the truck towed 40 miles back to town and tried to start it again. No luck. We left town and came back three days later. I attempted to start the vehicle again and this time it popped off right away without any problems. I pushed in the same strader valve on the fuel rail and this time fuel surged out. What could be happening here? All the fuses seem to be o.k. Was the engine somehow flooded or did the fuel pump stop working temporarily or what?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Kyle

 

Fuel pumps can fail slowly. They'll freeze up for a while and then cool down (or can be knocked loose) and then work again 'till they heat up again. You should definitely keep an eye on the fuel pressure and if it seems low, it may be that the fuel pump is bad. Or you could have an electrical fault somewhere that is stopping the pump. Check your various relays/fuses etc too. One thing is for sure, if it will crank but there's no pressure at the fuel rail, then the reason it won't start is that there's no fuel to burn. The question is, is it the pump itself, or is it a fault before it. Hard to say without any more testing.

I have heard of all of the following causing stall/no start

emissions/erg stuff
crank/cam position sensor
fuel pump relay
fuel pump inertia switch
bad ECM
bad coil pack/ignition module

there's a lot of stuff to check

 

Here is a possible reason based on how the system works.
When you first turn the ignition to Run, the pump should run about a second and produce some fuel pressure. Testing this is a clue to the pump/circuit being able to run and produce some pressure before motor cranking is even attempted.
Next, when cranking attempt is made, the crank position sensor detects this by the counting ring movement and signals the PCM to restart the fuel pump.
If the crank sensor is faulty or the plug is not making solid contact, the pump will not restart, there will be no ignition or any other function.
Check this out by pulling the plug off the crank sensor and reseating it.
If the plug contact is heat/vibration sensitive, the motor will stall in it's tracts and fail to restart as well, while running at anythime.
Of course the pump and it's control circuit can also fail at anytime but do some testing to eliminate some actions as a cause before trying to guess and throwing parts.
Good luck.

 

I have had the same exact problem twice now, and taken it in with no luck...please let me know if you found out what the problem was- it would be a huge help!

 

I suspect Bluegrass is on the right track here, but just as a what if, I had a similar problem a LOOONG time ago.

Used to have a Ford Country Squire wagon, 390 V-8. When it was about 6-7 years old, it did the same thing. Usually at some speed over maybe 35 mph. I looked for days, for anything not quite right. No luck initially. By accident, my buddies and I were off to a gun shop about 50 mi. away, and half way there it died, at about 60 mph. For whatever reason, I remembered hitting a large pothole at the same time, so while we were floating down the road, with the engine dead, trans in neutral, I looked for something else to run over. One chuck hole later, the engine backfired and started running again. It was a loose ground strap on the engine to firewall. Sorry to be long winded ( but it was funny as you know what).

Dave

P.S.- before I found the problem, it did it again on Christmas eve, right in front of a church (at midnight). When I hit a another hole, it backfired BIGTIME, blew the exhaust right off the car, and started running. I just stopped in the middle of the road, threw the exhaust in the back, and went home !