[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 07-Nov-01 AT 02:17 AM (EST)[/font][p][font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 07-Nov-01 AT 02:15 AM (EST)[/font]

My 96 ranger 2.3l dies when I decellerate from about 2300rpm or above. When it dies it is very hard to restart (like its flooded or starving for air). I have spent over $2000.00 at my local mech. who took it to Ford. Now thay have made it worse than ever. I have about 130k on the eng. no other problems.
Keith Finch
kfinch@aaris.net

 

What has been done to solve this problem? I'll assume that for $2000, a lot has been done. Here's a guess. When you let off the throttle, the engine twists on its mounts. So, look for any wiring/connectors or ground wires that might get pulled tight and break a connection, causing the stall.

 

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 07-Nov-01 AT 04:55 PM (EST)[/font][p]Here is a list of the things I was told were replaced.
MAF
COMPUTER (re-programed?)then replaced.
IAC
Crankshaft sensor
PCM

Here is the history:
In the begining I was leaving a winerey where the access road is about 2 miles uphill. When going down hill I would use 2nd gear to keep the truck at about 20-25mph all the way down a steep road. Then at the end their is a 60deg turn to a stop sign. it would die about 30 feet before the stop every time.
It was like it ran out of gas here every time. I thought it was a fuel problem, so I took it in and none of the mechanics could find anything wrong...several times!
After that it got a little worse. I had them place the rear end up on a lift to see if the TILT would trigger the symptom. It was after that thay finally found out it would die if you put the clutch in above 2700rmp and let it decelerate on its own.
It went back to the local dealership for computer diag. I wont tell you any more about that...just to say it was a great preformance by the sarvice mgr.

 

Not to slam the Ford techs, but are you confident with what they did (I haven't found any good ones yet)? Did they monitor the computer while they tested the truck? Were there any codes? If they did monitor the computer, I would have them give you the data (if it was kept) - not just the codes, but the actual sensor outputs. If a sensor goes haywire, then you've got a clue. They should have monitored the engine parameters to find out what is causing the engine to die, wheter it's fuel, spark or loss of electrical power. Just duplicating the problem without monitoring the computer wouldn't tell you much.

 

Actually they said there were a lot of codes. But the point is that after all the sensors were replaced the truck runs worse than it ever did. Still dies on decell and sometimes it runs really rough now too. I have no faith in the ford techs what so ever. They even sent all the info to the head corp. techs because they couldn't figure it out. Neither could the corp. techs. So $2000 later problem worse.

 

Tighten the set screw adjustment for your idle on the throttle body until you raise the idle rpm about 100 rpm. then retry driving the same terrain in the same manner. alot of times this screw is not even tightned enough to do its job properly. the builder relies on the computer and fuel pump to maintain idle.

 

Since all off the sensors seem to be OK, then you need to use the sensors and the data they give to start looking for things that might cause a sensor to read a particular way. Just because you get a code, doesn't necessarily mean that that sensor is bad. Things like bad connectors or loss of electrical power or like edgeracing_4.0 suggests, the idle screw. I know a guy that had a Suburban that was throwing all kinds of codes and had all sorts of sensors and other things replaced. After all that, he found out that the problem was just a bad diode.