Hi all;
I have been looking at your forum and see there are many very knowledgeable people here, so figured this would be the best place to come to get some help...
....here is my problem.

Its actually my dads problem,, myself and my mom are trying to fix his vehicle while he's at work and at camp, he brought it home last weekend and noticed that the dang thing just wouldn't rev up enough to pass, as if it didn't have enough power. then while he was here he drove to a town 2 hours away and noticed again it didn't seem to have enough gumption to pass anything over 100 KM H, and then, when he went to leave back to work at the end of the weekend, he got about 15 KM down the road and it wouldn't get to any speed higher than 60 KM h, so he turned around and brought it back and we took him up in our vehicle, and we have since been looking things up and trying stuff out to see why the dang thing is doing this and have come across alot of options, and alot of dead ends. First we tried changing the TRS (Transmission range sensor), and then we checked and tested at home the TPS (throttle position sensor), and then we checked and cleaned up the VSS (vehicle speed sensor), we also tried changing the fuel filter, we drained and refilled the transmission oil, we have looked at the MAF (mass airflow sensor), it didn't appear to be dirty, we have also checked a few of the fuses and didn't see anything. next weekend my dad is coming home and he is bringing home a tester to get the error code off of this vehicle because the check engine has been on for the past year and a half? (the reason we didn't do anything before is because there was no performance drop etc, so we assumed it was simply a failed oxygen sensor.) But I wouldn't mind having some ideas from you before hand?

WHATS HAPPENING: Vehicle seems to be unable to get past 3000 RPMs even with the gas pedal all the way down. and does not shift up gears very easily (usually only when you release then tromp on the gas, then it quickly slips back to lower the gear), it seems like it just gets bogged down when driving it like it is completely unable to get past 65 ish KM h and then bogs out., and it also seems to be unable to (obviously) to shift into OD? there are no errors on the dashboard (when we installed the TRS it reset the engine light and hasnt come back on yet), there is no backfiring, their is no stalling, the exhaust seems normal , the idle is smooth and normal and the throttle body seems clean and its sensor has tested out perfectly for ground, volts and a smooth climb as we manually move the throttle plus drops back to normal even when banging on it while testing.


SPECS:
Ford Escape 2006
3.0 L
4x4 (automatically engaging...apparently we arent smart enough to choose when to engage it??!!)
160,000 KM on it.


Thanks very much for all, if any help you can give me, anything you suggest would be greatly appreciated ,
my mom and I will look into it and check it out.
Donnyh13

 

Plugged catalytic converter? One of my kids had a GM 3.8L V6. He said he was having trouble getting it up to speed, and top speed kept dropping as time went by. Was getting hard to enter a busy road, no go. Was getting really bad, he didn't want to drive it anymore in traffic.
He has a code reader, most time no codes, when there were codes, they were all over and changing.

I brought over a vacuum gauge, and found a place to hook it up to measure intake manifold vacuum. Started it up, after startup I thought vac was low, so had him put it in reverse (I was standing in front!) with his foot hard on the brake, and bring engine RPM up to 2,000 or 2,500 or so for maybe 5 seconds. Usually, when the throttle is first opened, vacuum will drop suddenly and then recover quickly. But this was low, like less than 10" of vacuum.

I had brought some small long vac tubing, so I could run the hose out the hood seal by the windshield, and in through the passenger window while he drove. Oh boy, vacuum was really low when he was trying to get it to drive around his neighborhood.

Because we could see low vacuum with it brake-torqued and stationary, we could troubleshoot it easily. Next step was to unbolt the catalytic converter from the exhaust cross-over pipe, just moved out of the way enough to let exhaust get by. Started it up, very loud of course, re-ran vac test with brake-torque, could get around 20" of vacuum now no problem.

We dropped the whole exhaust system to the floor and slid it out, had to disconnect wires to O2 sensors of course. We took a big shop-vac, used the air-out port on it to hook shop-vac hose as a blower to the front of the exhaust pipe, used a wet rag around it to try to get a better seal. That exhaust system was plugged! Even though before at a regular idle it seemed like exhaust came out the back of it OK.

A new cat converter fixed it. We blew air through the muffler both ways and turned it this way and that to be sure any broken chunks of cat core came out before we bolted the new cat up. Retested vac again after it was fixed, was great.

Not saying that has to be your problem, but went through this to show possible troubleshooting methods.

 

Gee, a MIL for a year and a half and now you wonder why you have a problem?

Probably scenario: O2 sensor bad or vacuum leak, excessive fuel dumped into cats, cats ruined from excessive fuel, cats clogged, not it won't run right.

Most likely, was completely preventable by NOT ignoring the MIL.

 

Torky2; Thanks so much for your detailed reply . You have no idea how appreciated your time and info is. We have gone back and forth on taking that out (maybe running a crowbar through the cat converter ), On the 2006 Ford Escapes there appears to be 3 cat converters according to the repair manual....2/ upstream, "fast light off" catalyst directly below each exhaust manifold (says these are an integral part of the manifold), and the usual large one by the muffler , (the conventional three-way catalytic converter located behind the junction between the two exhaust pipes for the front and rear cylinder heads.....any suggestions which one might be more apt to plug off first ? My Mom is thinking the big one under the vehicle is our best bet for a start......does this seem right to you ?
Thanks very much, have yourself a great day
Donny H

 

Faced with that situation, I would start looking at the common downstream cat as it would seem to be the easiest to test. If you can reproduce the problem with a brake-torque raised idle, you could try unbolting the front of it, if it can be unbolted.
If you can get the front end of the common cat disconnected, and have a big shop-vac, one with a 2 1/2" diameter hose, you could try blowing air through the common cat and out the tailpipe to check for restriction. If not plugging up or otherwise damaged, most cats allow airflow with little real restriction.
Another trick is to remove an oxygen sensor that is upstream of a cat, to allow a exhaust discharge path ahead of a possibly plugged cat, just to test.
We didn't do that, as we could just unbolt the cat's input pipe from the crossover pipe, a flanged connection, on the car I described above.

Cat's can die differently. As SHO89 mentions, a long-running misfire or overly-rich condition that allows high HC or even raw gas into a cat can overheat it, causing the ceramic core to crack and collapse. Some can just reduce airflow, without the whole core breaking up. Some can start breaking up, sending loose pieces that are small enough to fit down the pipe to travel to downstream cats or muffler, and lodge there. Loose pieces can make noise, like a bad rattle, or some may only make noise when the unit with the chunks in it get tilted around.

 

Thanks Torky2, yup it was the CC, we just popped the entire exhaust pipe off and the thing ran great, albeit the entire neighborhood knew we were testing it hehe....... its all cleaned out now and running like a charm..... Thanks very much for your help. And Project, yes I do realize it was bad leaving the CEL for that long, but when he purchased it ,the light was on and the previous owner had it in to Ford service twice and they said it was just a faulty warning light , its out now and we know why, this is a second hand vehicle so we dont know why the CAT died, perhaps the previous owner used bad fuel, but we didn't notice anything wrong with the car during the CEL being on until recently ,so assumed it was the faulty dash light. Thank you for your knowledge, sharing of experience and for your input.
, I knew I came to the right place!

 

That's great!
Glad to have been able to help.
And thanks for letting us know what you found out

 

No problem, I always hate it when I find my problem on a forum yet the OP never says what was the problem.