My E150 1992 5.0 Chateau van was running great and I stopped at the post office, turned it off and when I came out it barely started and I had to use a little gas pedal to help it, or it did help it anyway. Now it won't start at all.
I have spark and its at the right time, the plugs are not fouled, I have 45 psi fuel pressure when activating the key on at the fuel rail, distributor is not loose, spark is strong, no disconnected vacum lines that I can see and i looked hard.
Why won't the thing start? It tries like it wants to then won't do it?
Any help appreciated
Andrew.

 

Silly question but have to ask could it be out of gas, or it could be bad gas at least.

 

Pull the vacuum hose off the FPR and if there is any fuel in it the FPR is bad.
You can also turn the key on and off with the hose removed and if any fuel comes out of the nipple the FPR is bad.

You can also try holding the throttle wide open (on the floor) and crank it and if it starts you more than likely have a bad FPR or stuck injector.

 

Having owned an E150 1992 5.0 Chateau for many years, now w/over 225K on it, the 1st thing I'd do would be to utilize the On Board Diagnostics system. An OBD1 fault code reader can diagnose problems even on motors that won't start.

 

Thanks for the input guys. I got it to start today and it idled perfect but when I turned it off after 1/2 an hour it would not restart. Under hard accelleration it misses and bucks, but gentle and it runs great. I cannot find a MAF for the 1992 model, my manual covers that year but there is nothing to clean, nothing in the intake, I must be missing something. While running I disconnected the MAP vacum line and it started missing etc, so I reconnected the vacum and it ran on fine. I have bosch platinum plugs in it that have the two ground electrodes and they have done 30k miles, but look fine. Maybe its that simple, plugs, give me your input please on the bosch plugs. I changed the fuel filter today just incase and cut the old one open, clean inside.
The fuel pump is quiet, not loud like the others I have had go out over the years on other vans and its got good fuel pressure. This problem started in one day, and came on very quickly, didn't want to start and I gave it some throttle which never usually do and it sputtered to life, went to the Post Office and turned it off, I almost didn't get it home it took so long to start. One time cranking it I smelled lots of raw fuel from the pipe, the next time I cranked it I smelled nothing, like it wasn't getting fuel. This is proving hard to fix. Plugs next.
Thanks again for the input. I did read the codes and there were no new ones. Andrew.
Just checked the FPR and its dry and turned the key on, it stayed dry, good tip though for me to remember thanks.

 

A 1992 5.0 E-series does not have a MAF sensor.

I only use Motorcraft plugs.
Other have had bad luck with other brand plugs but some say off brand plugs will work OK in their engine.
But it seems the higher the price of the plug the worse it works.

 

That's a funny way to put it. Presume you checked for fault codes, found none & haven't recently cleared some old ones? These codes should normally be stored, but sometimes intermittent problems don't 'throw a code' so you may need to check for codes more than once in order to catch it. After I gave up w/all the usual suspects & some pros said uncle, unable to find an intermittent problem b/c it wouldn't hiccup in front of them, I got my own OBD1 & did a Chinese Fire Drill when my Club Wagon acted up & quickly zeroed in on the fault.

Also found out the hard way that these 5.0's can be ridiculously sensitive to spark plug wires, including just their routing. New wires caused bad misfiring only b/c of slight differences where I ran the wires.

There's a lot of wires & terminals going to a lot of components. The bundle of wires going thru firewall is thicker than many people's arm. A little fritz almost anywhere in a 20 YO van's electronics might cause trouble. OBD can be an extremely useful tool even if not perfect.

 

hey I found the problem. Coil was bad. It would spark turning the engine over but under load was breaking down and would hardly start the engine.
$22 bucks lifetime warranty from O'Reilly Auto and I am back on the road. Sure glad that I resisted doing plugs and spending any other money on the darling.
I have found Bosch 2 platinum to work very well on these engines and noticed a little more power and maybe a little economy. Mine are still working well with 36k on them.
Thanks for the input and help. yes I changed my wires and routed them about the same as the old ones, but got #7 and #8 too close together and had a ping and misfire for months trying to solve it. A ford mechanic told me about making sure that 7 and 8 do not run close to each other and I didn't think he was right. Sure enough it worked. Weird stuff those magnetic fields and resistance etc.
thanks again Andrew.