Newbie 2006 CEL questions

[tdjaster]

Newbie alert...please forgive me if I sound dumb

I have an '06 with the 5.4 and 109k. I'm on my holiday road trip and the engine light came on. Got the code scanned and it said lean bank 1. Just for good measure I changed all four O2 sensors. Light is still on.

Also for the last ~7-8k miles it's done the engine misfire/hiccup thing that I've seen mentioned in other places online. It mainly happens when under a load between 40-50 mph.

I imagine these things are all related and I probably didn't need to spend $185 on O2 sensors?

Your thoughts are appreciated.

 

[GAINMOB]

bad coil over plug and/or sparkplug

 

[Mikes05expy]

Welcome

 

[tdjaster]

bad coil over plug and/or sparkplug

What's the best way to figure which one(s) are the issue?

 

[Bedrck47]

do you recall what the code number was

Bank 1 is the Passenger side

at present where are you located and have you gone thru any bad weather during this trip??

 

[tdjaster]

do you recall what the code number was

Bank 1 is the Passenger side

at present where are you located and have you gone thru any bad weather during this trip??

I don't recall, I'll get it checked again tomorrow or Monday and post it.

I live in San Antonio. We went to Little Rock and back and it's been dry all week. The misfire has been happening for a few months, but the light just came on while we travelled up on Monday.

 

[Bedrck47]

have you ever had the plugs and coils replaced

 

[tdjaster]

have you ever had the plugs and coils replaced

I just bought it in July with almost exactly 100k on it. I have not had them replaced and do not know if the previous owner did.

 

[tdjaster]

Today's update...it was weird.

I planned on replacing all spark plugs and maybe coils this morning. As I drove to Autozone, the CEL was off and the Expy drove fine. I was confused but a little excited. I bought everything for an oil change and came back home to do that.

Afterward, I had some errands this afternoon. I intentionally drove it a little harder than normal (ex: hard accelerating onto highway) to try to force the bucking condition to occur again. In total I drove about 30-40 miles today. By the end of the day, the light was back on and all symptoms resumed.

I stopped at a NAPA certified mechanic to pick his brain. He said I, unfortunately, wasted money on the O2 sensors and that he was "very certain" that it was a vacuum hose leak. He said I could get the hose assembly from the dealer for about $50 or that they could do it in about an hour for $189. I'm leaving town tomorrow morning for work and won't be able to do anything on it until Friday, at best. I'm going to think a little more on whether I want to do it myself or have the pros tackle it for me.

Anyone have experience on replacing the hoses?

 

[Bedrck47]

again it would be nice to know which codes are causing the light to come on.

If its a vacuum hose leak you could get a can of carb cleaner and spray around the vacuum hoses and if there is a leak you will hear the rpm's increase.

 

[JMB19]

Mine did this same thing for a while. I replaced all the spark plugs with the Bosch 1 piece ones and have never had the problem again. Mine would miss or, "buck" so bad that at first I thought the trans was shot. Sorry; mine is an 06 Limited w/ 5.4.

 

[tdjaster]

Forgive me for not replying sooner with the outcome...but here's what happened.

I gave the truck to the NAPA joint and it turned out to be worse than we hoped. They ended up replacing all spark plugs (five of which broke in the cylinder), two of the coils, and doing a fuel injection service. Total bill= $1,309.

It was a bit of a punch to the gut to have to pay but it's been running perfect since then.