Hi All;
I have a 2010 Ford Escape, 2.5L standard, high miler but ran good - until now. Its sitting at 322000 km (yes we're in Canada), and my wife was driving and suddenly felt a loss of power and shaking and he check engine light came on. It did eventually come back to normal operation but when the loss of power came up the car would run only about 95 kph. I checked the DTC's and got a P0302 - cylinder 2 misfire. I was a bit late with spark plug replacement but it had platinum plugs in it, so I replaced them with no improvement. I have since been troubleshooting and diagnosing and I cannot seem to figure out what the issue is. I have swapped coil packs with cylinder 1 and 2 and no change( the trouble code did not follow the pack), then I did a compression test and it seemed fine, 150-147-150-150. Next had a look for a fuel filter and could not find it, only to find out afterwards that the car has a built-in filter with the pump, completely inaccessible, I looked! Last bit of troubleshooting was to swap injectors between 1 and 2, but the code remained the same( trouble code did not follow injector) . Now I am noticing more of a shake at idle, but it is not much. I suspect electronic origin to the problem since there are times when it seems to run just fine, then there are other times when the check engine light flashes while driving and I even had the traction control light come on for a while when I had a particularly bad episode of the shakes. I have not noticed any antifreeze loss, and I tried spraying some Brakeclean around the intake to see if I could see a change in idling, but I did not see any. I am not sure if Brakeclean is the right stuff to use, I don't have any starter fluid at the moment. I have also checked the CHT sensor, the EGR, and the MAF sensor, although the EGR I just sprayed with WD40 (it worked before for an EVAP code). All hoses and wiring look good, but I have not done a wiggle test on wires while it is running.

At any rate, I am now quite officially stumped, and open to any suggestions. And of course I did clear all codes at each step, sometimes multiple time each step. Your time and help is greatly appreciated!

 

Ignition wiring to #2
Injector wiring to #2
Air leak close to #2 inlet valves

Then I'd repeat the compression test. #1, #3 and #4 seem too even to be true given the mileage. #2 IS slightly low which seems too coincidental. Did you hold the throttle wide open while you cranked the motor? That will tell you if it is mechanical but TBH if it was I'd expect it to be a permanently dead #2, not come and go.

All the other things you have listed would not only apply to #2

 

Thanks simonsi - I have tried the good old wiggle test of both injector wiring and ignition wiring close to the coil pack and not produced any change. I also tried spraying Brakeclean around the intake and saw no noticeable change, but that may be a possibility but would that come and go like we have seen?

 

It may do but I'd have thought you would have got a "too lean" error if the air leak was enough to cause a misfire. Check the wiring harness where it bridges from engine to chassis - that is where you are likely to get fatigue failure.

 

So I've been driving this car and trying to troubleshoot, and still no success and no change until today, I noticed it shaking more than before at idle and I got an P0300 and P0301 and P0302 code when I scanned it. This is new, since the last posting I broke down and took the car to Ford, they could not find the problem, amazingly they did not charge me for it. They could see cylinder 2 as a low contributor but could not determine why, they repeated compression tests, tested PCM driver circuits and after that I took off the Valve cover and had a look to make sure the timing chain and camshafts looked fine and they did. Any ideas? Bad crank sensor? Bad Cam position sensor? Bad VCT actuator? That seems most likely as now it seems to idle rough all the time.