Misfire or something else??

ManUpOrShutUp said:

It is. A topside creeper is on my wish list.

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Me too my back can't take it!

<<My own misfire experience turned out to be carbon build up in the combustion chamber, or so i'm told. I talked to a bud of mine who is a shop foreman at a Ford dealer. He told me to get the engine stinking hot before trying to crack the plugs loose. I bought the plugs,a can of seafoam, and filled up with Shell premium gas( no ethanol) and drove the truck hard for a few days. My misfire went away and I still have the plugs sitting in my toolbox. Mine is an 07 expy with 270,000 kms. Only in Canada eh!>>

I’m going to keep this in mind when I get to the 01 Navigator I picked up from someone who got discouraged when the dealer tried to tell her it needed a new motor. It’s low mileage for its year so I assume it had a lot of city driving (it got my attention because it’s from Arizona so it’s rust free-a rare find around here). I have a friend who was a service manager at a Chevy dealer who mentioned the carbon issue you ran into. He said he only saw it one time, but it’s something to think about.

I’ll be getting at that one soon. It also has a cylinder 8 misfire that remained after the dealer (supposedly) replaced plugs and coils on that side. First off I will test compression as was suggested on my original post about that vehicle.




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Looking at that number 8 plug and the coils,looks like you've narrowed down the problem. Those coils look deformed from heat and the number 8 is really dirty on the porcelain,almost like the boot wasn't fully seated. Good luck.

Fordgirl01 said:

Thank you. I don’t have a timing light but I’d probably just replace coil and plug after going to all the trouble to get at it. I’ve only had it less than a year so I have never replaced coils or plugs. It appears to have been well taken care of, so maybe they have been replaced before.

I will check the things you mentioned around the shifter this weekend.

Thanks again and I’ll keep you posted.


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I also would replace the coil and plug. I've had 2 expies and coils are a problem. Note: the NAPA gold coils are very good and 1/2 the price of the ford ones.

Sgt Darkness said:

Wow..... it’s probably #8 but that needs to be checked first. You may not have one but I have an old timing light I use to verify a miss on the plugs, plug wires or coils. The timing light won’t tell you which of the three it is but nowadays people replace the coil and plug at the same time. Have you done that lately? If you have to bump the shifter that to me indicates something is not quite right. I would check the plug-in below the shifter that sends info to the trans also, if in fact the Nav has the plug. While you’re there also check for tightness and condition of the wiring from the shifter. These things I do know and am sure someone else who has more knowledge will chime in soon. Let us know what you find....

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How to you use a timing light on a COP ?

Might be a simple fix...when was the last fuel filter change? More than 15K and it's due.

Ah, the old mechanic telling you you need a new engine trick. I think I have had two maybe three vehicles now that the owners were told that. Bought a 94 Cavalier with a 4-cylinder for $350 and drove it for 5 years after replacing one spark plug wire. Had another 1990 Ford truck with a straight 6 300 in it that they told him it needed a new engine and wanted to thousand something dollars to put in there. I bought it for fifty bucks for eight or nine years even to Canada and back.
Another reason why I hate your ideas. Occasionally you will find one with a young guy or a new owner taking over who has decent Scruples. A lot of them had a great work ethic but not Scruples. However, I find that in a few short months to years they turn into the typical old mechanics like everyone else. They become indoctrinated into the theory of rebuilding every car to 2017 standards if it's 2019. They don't understand that a 2002 or 2003 doesn't need brakes, rotors, hoses, calipers, struts Etc to be as safe as it was last week before the break pads were through and ground on to the rotor or even just hit the chirper.
I absolutely do not understand them. I run a lawn mower repair shop and have for a good number of years. The longer I do it the less work I want to do. I want to do a simple but replacement get their motor running and send them on their way. I do not want to sharpen or change the blades, remove the deck, do the oil and filter and spark plugs blah blah blah blah. I don't want to do more to each one. I don't want to maximize the amount of money out of each customer. I have 50 of them here to fix and won't get caught up until November. I just want to get them out of here as quickly as possible. I know garage mechanics are not that busy but they have a steady stream of cars so I don't understand why they fall into this mentality. I refuse to ever allow my business to fall into that or to let my beliefs or practices slowly morph into something they are not. I have raised my prices over the years because I was doing things quite dirt-cheap before. I am still right at about half price or 60% of every other shop in town and I intend to keep it that way.
I don't really know what the mentality is Behind These garages. Do they just need a lot more money? Are they greedy? Are they in it for the short haul because they figure in five or six years they won't really be the owners are won't be there? I don't get it. I have 95 reviews currently on Google. 93 of those are five star reviews one is a four-star and one is a one-star from someone who wasn't even a customer they just didn't like the fact that I didn't work on their brand equipment. Google just rounded my rating from a 4.9 up to a 5.0. Don't know how they do their math because that's a 4.946 and that doesn't round up to a 5.0. I'm over a full point ahead of the closest rank shop in town. Of auto garages in the area I don't think there's anyone with over a 3.2. You'll find lots of scathing reviews of people who say they were ripped off or tried to be ripped off by garages which is true.
I just hate car so much and can't stand working on them so I don't do any car repairs. I still do sometimes for people I know because I can't stand to see them spend three or four hundred dollars when we can do it for less than half that and I can still make huge money for doing it.
Just a crock of crap that we live in a world where there's hundreds of garages with an a 8 to 10 mile radius we got there all overpriced and most of them crooks. I absolutely wish the industry did not exist and everyone had to either fix their own vehicles from forums like this, get friends or family to help them fix them, find a backyard mechanic guy that did it at his home or simply sold the vehicles and bought a different one. It would be a much better world if this were the case.
It bothers me that I can't change the world in the auto repair but I just don't have that kind of time or patience or endurance to work on all the cars. I have however changed the entire mower industry in my area. Every shop out there knows my company's name and most of them probably don't like me. The funny part is I go to lots of their shops and actually buy parts in them and only two of them both of which have shut down in the past five years even knew that I was the one running that business.
They don't have to really worry too much or get pissed off though because everyone has so much business they can't stand it. 4 to 6 weeks to Simply get a quill screwed onto a lawn mower from the end of March until October.

Fix what it needs and ship it. Yes I am an honest mechanic. We ARE out there. 30 years and i'm tired of polishing turds. Polish all you want; it still smells like a turd.

pitdexion said:

Fix what it needs and ship it. Yes I am an honest mechanic. We ARE out there. 30 years and i'm tired of polishing turds. Polish all you want; it still smells like a turd.

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But very very few of you out there. I know a guy or two that owns their own shop that are super busy and they are like me, they don't have time to do extra stuff they just fix it up as good as they can as quickly as possible and send it on its way. When you take care of the customer like that for a fair price you know there will be back the next time something breaks. You don't have to put $800 into the brake system right now perhaps they won't be back for for 5 years. You can throw some brake pads and a rotor on and get them by for a year-and-a-half and they're totally happy with that.
Most mechanics and techs make flat rate from book labor so they want as many jobs as possible but they can almost always do them faster than the book cost for if they've done a few of them so they want to do the extra services on the cars but they rush them so they can get as many done a
a day to make as much money as possible. If you're just getting paid by the hour you're just looking to get your day in.
I fixed 9 lawn mowers yesterday and that's a very high-volume day for me.
Some days I only get 1-3 done.

TobyU said:

they don't have time to do extra stuff they just fix it up as good as they can as quickly as possible and send it on its way. When you take care of the customer like that for a fair price you know there will be back the next time something breaks. You don't have to put $800 into the brake system right now perhaps they won't be back for for 5 years. You can throw some brake pads and a rotor on and get them by for a year-and-a-half and they're totally happy with that.

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That approach works in the ghetto and you're right, people are happy with it ... in that type of area. The rest of us want it done right at a fair price (rather than done as quickly and cheaply as possible). If I have to go back in 1.5 years for the same problem because my mechanic half-assed it the first time to save time/money, I'm definitely not going back and most other people living in this area wouldn't either. Know your clientele and proceed accordingly.