I have a very weird situation happening. (Early 1999 7.3 F350 Dually 4DR)
well what happens is when I am driving down the road and I turn on my wipers "intermitten" to clear the windshield my engine will momentarily die! Although if I am maintaining speed or excellerating it acts like a very violent hesitation, if I am coasting (no throttle) to a stop or sitting in the driveway it will die. this is not every time I turn on the wipers or every actuated wipe, just once in a while. And it does this when it is totally dry. I tested it on a dry day with my wipers raised off the shield.

Also, while I am excellerating and going through the gears (automatic) once I get to the last gear and the overdrive gear the truck will act like it is stuttering for a little bit until I get to a constant speed. Only under throttle input will this happen.

Right now I have the truck at an almost trusted one man shop (he says he is Ford Diesel trained. What should I be on the lookout for if he is taking advatage of me. He says he is gonna look for an electrical short or fault. At 68.00/hour. (I thought this was very fair) if it is not for 24 hours of labor though.


Thank you all for the responses.

 

The '99 is known to have a leak at the bottom of the windshield that will drip on the fuse box under the dash and will do things like you are saying. Have him look under there for signs of water running there.

 

Rick,
I have looked and did not find any water signs or damage under the dash or the firewall. I remember reading that a while back and that was the first thing I checked.

Thanks

 

gaurantee its the CPS. Mine did the same thing, changed the CPS under recall and never did it again. Cut out when the wipers went in intermitant mode. I've heard that there is some sort of eletrical frequency that can disrupt the CPS or some sort of explanation like that. All i know is it was cuttin out on the freeway on the way to the dealer, it was raining, after the new one was in, still rainin, never has done it since.

 

Change the cps x2. Total cast under $30 takes 1o minutes to change..

 

CPS.

I had a similar thread to this back in '09. except it hiccupped while I was just driving. Some people who responded asked if I had my wipers on intermittent when it happened. That's when I discovered a CPS going out will hiccup with the wipers on intermittent.

To test the theory, I put my wipers on intermittent the next time I drove my rig and within a minute I was coasting to the side of the freeway! LOL.

Stewart

 

This seems to be a more common thing with the aftermarket CPS than with the Ford version, but I'd agree a new Ford or IH CPS would be a good place to start.

Before you change it, drive around with the wipers on intermittent on a sunny day so you can rule out water being part of the issue.

 

My air compressor does the same thing. If I reach down to pump the air bags up it will sometimes kill the engine, then fires right back up when I let off the switch.

 

i had the same problem a long time ago with my PSD. i wrote about here in 2006 or so.
i had the windshield replaced then when it rained it would stall out.
i had the window shop re-seal the windshield and i replaced the CPS on advice from this forum and it never happened again.
now i cannot say what fixed the problem, the slow, barely noticeable leak behind the windshield or the CPS. either way, both are fairly easy fixes.

thanks
-mike

 

I have noticed a correlation between wet weather and CPS problems on my truck as well.

 

Moisture will get past the seal on the CPS and kill the truck when the road is wet and splashing up a spray. Mine did this a couple of times and scared the cxxp out of me. The truck always started back up. Put a little vasoline on the rubber seal and that will help lock out the water.

 

Thanks guys, I will let you know what happens.