Will it ever run right?

[ripped camel]

I swear I've thrown so much damn money at this car and it still is far from driving right. I switched in a new computer on Friday and it drove a thousand times better...for a few days. Now it's doing the same erratic crap it was doing before.

1. Sitting in park it was revving all by itself up and down from 500rpms to 800 rpms, whatever the hell is causing that.

2. It hesitates horribly and feels like it is sackless.

3. From a roll if I dump on it, the car feels like its standing still and barely wants to move. It used to go like an animal from a roll, now I'd be lucky to beat a Corolla!

I will say my old computer was throwing a IMRC code and a Lean O2 sensor code. The new computer is mentioning failed catalyst and O2 sensor again. It hasn't brought up the issue with the IMRC yet with the new computer. So that really confuses me.

All of the following parts are new and changed within the last 2,000 miles:
Motorcraft fuel filter, SVT focus 255lph fuel pump, Crankshaft position sensor, plugs, all boot were checked and cracked ones were replaced, swapped out the IAC for another used one and cleaned it thoroughly (although it is used so that still can be the issue), Cleaned the TB, PCV valve, Hand cleaned IMRC's, new ds head gasket, oil gasket, valve cover gaskets, swapped to a 98 trans, Mach 1 torque converter, J-mod, all new fresh fluids.

The problem was there before I did any of these mods so I know none of the above caused the problem (so it's not the 98 tranny causing the issue). The cats were gutted, and not long after is when the problems started. I know it should run fine because Kooks delete the cats so there should be no difference in driveability, and my SCT will not delete the O2 sensors. Both Reinhardt and SCT were unable to get my O2's to be deleted.

So I'm at a loss what to do with this thing. I've got WELL over $5000 invested in this car....probably upwards of $7000 by now! I could have had my Mustang back for that kind of money.

Any ideas on what else could cause this? I'm truly at a loss....
Jamie feel free to chime in and mention anything else you did or can rule out, so we can better diagnose. I think I got it all though....

 

[MediumD]

The cats were gutted, and not long after is when the problems started.

This should be a clue. How exactly were they gutted?

 

[brentalan]

If you gutted the cats and don't delete the O2 that confuses the computer.

 

[ripped camel]

I know, but for whatever reason my SCT X3 will not delete the cats. I've had multiple tunes sent from Reinhardt, and even SCT themselves sent me a tune. The same freaking light comes on...

P1131 Lack of HO2's- 11 switches - sensor indicates lean (B1, S1)

 

[jrherald420]

Sound like you know what the problem is, replace the cats or make the o2 sensor deletes that cliffyk makes from Mustangforums.com.

 

[ripped camel]

Sound like you know what the problem is, replace the cats or make the o2 sensor deletes that cliffyk makes from Mustangforums.com.

Yeah but I was told the program deletes cats. If people on this forum are running kooks headers with no cats and don't have a cel, that means they deleted the cats on the tune. So how come my car is not accepting the command to delete the cats?

 

[jrherald420]

Because youve beat it with a hammer intill it was retarded. That sh*t will never be right again.

 

[ripped camel]

Because youve beat it with a hammer intill it was retarded. That sh*t will never be right again.

Hardee har har....

Seriously, the issue was before I hit it with a hammer. As I've said a gagillion times, I hit the valve cover with a hammer after I realized there were already metal shavings in the head, and chunks missing off the cam towers. At that point I decided that thing was going to be taught a lesson if it was already broken....out came the hammer.

Back on topic. As I said if others on here have managed to delete the O2 sensors , and even on my 03 GT I was able to delete O2 sensors, then why can't I delete them? Something is f'd up.

 

[BAD97LSC]

derek who is telling you people are running kooks with no cats, i have cats on my car and i have kooks headers! i have said from day one you need cats on a car, be it stock or aftermarket, doesnt matter, i have a pair of magnaflow cats on my car. i stopped thinking what your problem was after you told me the cats are gutted and the car throws all kinds of lights. put the f-ing cats back on it and clear the codes. your car smells like :q:q:q:q when it runs too thats a clue right there.

 

[jrherald420]

But thats not the problem Jamie....................:shifty::shifty:

 

[brentalan]

High-flow magnaflow cats are great, put those on there, turn on your O2 and get your drivability back, think computer command has no idea how much fuel to dump without them.

 

[Tiltedhalo]

Put cats back on it, if you have gutted primary cats the large chamber will cause exhaust swirling and back flow, causing the O2's to show F$# up readings to the ECM. If the secondary O2's are not shut off in the tune the ECM will throw a code for failed catalyst, they are there to make sure your cats are functioning. What you will get is poor part and full throttle performance because your air fuel ratio's can not be adjusted by the ECM properly. If you dont want the cats back on use straight pipe through the converter with a anti reversion cusp at the inlet.

 

[ripped camel]

derek who is telling you people are running kooks with no cats, i have cats on my car and i have kooks headers! i have said from day one you need cats on a car, be it stock or aftermarket, doesnt matter, i have a pair of magnaflow cats on my car. i stopped thinking what your problem was after you told me the cats are gutted and the car throws all kinds of lights. put the f-ing cats back on it and clear the codes. your car smells like :q:q:q:q when it runs too thats a clue right there.

Explain how my 03 GT ran fine without cats after having the O2 sensors deleted? Never threw another CEL. My car does REAK of fuel though. It smells BAAAAAAAD!

High-flow magnaflow cats are great, put those on there, turn on your O2 and get your drivability back, think computer command has no idea how much fuel to dump without them.

Do you know anyone that has Magnaflow cats? I read that they were failing after 6 months so they no longer offer the lifetime warranty on them...only a 6 month now. I think you are right about it not knowing how much fuel to dump though, which is why these damn O2's need to be turned off.

Put cats back on it, if you have gutted primary cats the large chamber will cause exhaust swirling and back flow, causing the O2's to show F$# up readings to the ECM. If the secondary O2's are not shut off in the tune the ECM will throw a code for failed catalyst, they are there to make sure your cats are functioning. What you will get is poor part and full throttle performance because your air fuel ratio's can not be adjusted by the ECM properly. If you dont want the cats back on use straight pipe through the converter with a anti reversion cusp at the inlet.

I did get a failed catalyst code yesterday with the new computer...the old computer never threw that code for whatever reason. It would only throw P1131 (which I mentioned above) and P1519 IMRC stuck open (B1). With the new computer it doesn't throw P1519 anymore, now it throws the failed catalyst code.

XLR says with the X2 it's easy to delete the O2's...at least that's what I though he said. He said the X3 sucks which is probably why I'm having the issue deleting them.

 

[LaserSVT]

OMFG Derrik! Seriously!? Did you never mention this before or am a part mongoloid?.... or both?
You been talking about this issue forever but I dont remember you saying it started right after the cats were hollowed out! I a 96-98 Cobra the oonly way to make them run right was to have an eliminator pipe cause the gutted cats fugg the flow up too much. Plus the tune needed to know they were not there AND I still needed simulators for the rear O2's. That was for my 96 and my 97. First time it drove me nuts with the hesitation and just weird behavior untill we tried the BBK eliminators (not made any more) with the Diablo tune.
Then the second time I forgot about it and then remembered a couple months latter. Swapped in a set from ebay and it got better but still a little off. So I decided to buy a used MAC off road H-pipe and pulled the stock gutted cats. Wow what a difference! Power was back, mileage improved and the sound was so damn nice!

Now these were stick cars and tuning is quite different. Also I just did my whole exhaust and it would have not cost me a dime more to have the pipes made before the cats and remove them as opposed to what I did do and had the new exhaust start AFTER the cats. We have no inspection and the shop was all ready to do it but I know how these engines are and I had found 3 or 4 people on here in 4 year old threads talk about issues with hesitation when they gutted their cats.


So I am not telling ya what to do only what I have noticed in my adventures with 4V Ford engines. I could be way off and just be talking about my ass though.

 

[driller]

I have no cats on either of my Marks and no codes. No MIL eliminators on the '96 either.

I have to agree with the 'gutted' cats messing up the flow.

 

[brentalan]

"Do you know anyone that has Magnaflow cats? I read that they were failing after 6 months so they no longer offer the lifetime warranty on them...only a 6 month now. I think you are right about it not knowing how much fuel to dump though, which is why these damn O2's need to be turned off. "


Yeah I have them on my '88 Caprice, they have been on there for 4 years, no problems yet.....

Even if you don't want to go with them, I'd say put some cats on there, I don't think you gain much by deleting them and look at all the problems you are getting, it's not worth it.

Just going by the title of your thread, it seems like you are sick of the problems and just want a reliable ride. If you are going to try to tune it or whatever then :q:q:q:q happens, you just gotta be prepared to deal with that eventuality IMHO.

 

[ripped camel]

OMFG Derrik! Seriously!? Did you never mention this before or am a part mongoloid?.... or both?
You been talking about this issue forever but I dont remember you saying it started right after the cats were hollowed out! I a 96-98 Cobra the oonly way to make them run right was to have an eliminator pipe cause the gutted cats fugg the flow up too much. Plus the tune needed to know they were not there AND I still needed simulators for the rear O2's. That was for my 96 and my 97. First time it drove me nuts with the hesitation and just weird behavior untill we tried the BBK eliminators (not made any more) with the Diablo tune.
Then the second time I forgot about it and then remembered a couple months latter. Swapped in a set from ebay and it got better but still a little off. So I decided to buy a used MAC off road H-pipe and pulled the stock gutted cats. Wow what a difference! Power was back, mileage improved and the sound was so damn nice!

Now these were stick cars and tuning is quite different. Also I just did my whole exhaust and it would have not cost me a dime more to have the pipes made before the cats and remove them as opposed to what I did do and had the new exhaust start AFTER the cats. We have no inspection and the shop was all ready to do it but I know how these engines are and I had found 3 or 4 people on here in 4 year old threads talk about issues with hesitation when they gutted their cats.


So I am not telling ya what to do only what I have noticed in my adventures with 4V Ford engines. I could be way off and just be talking about my ass though.

Makes sense. So what are my option then? Is the flow screwed up because of that crap drivers side cat that is part of the header? I know the passenger side one would be easy to straight pipe because it's just bolted on, but the ds is a whole different story.

When I first thought about doing this I thought the turbulence would cause a problem, but the majority of people told me I was wrong on here. You know what they say...trust your instinct....kind of like when my instinct said "leave the ds valve cover alone"

I have no cats on either of my Marks and no codes. No MIL eliminators on the '96 either.

I have to agree with the 'gutted' cats messing up the flow.

What do you have in place of the cats? Are they straight piped?

 

[Staffamerica74]

Please buy a stock exhaust and put it on.... why do you like to fight everyone so much? Just do as we say and see if it fixes it.... You should know by now that these guys know cars better then you.

 

[ripped camel]

Please buy a stock exhaust and put it on.... why do you like to fight everyone so much? Just do as we say and see if it fixes it.... You should know by now that these guys know cars better then you.

I'm not fighting. Why is asking questions, and weighing options considered fighting? Driller doesn't have a stock manifold, neither do others on here. Obviously it can be done. I don't want to spend money I don't have to go back to square 1, if it is possible to take a step forward.

Laser just said that he fixed the issue changing the pipes (on his Cobras). So I want to figure out what options are out there.

 

[slowmkviii]

i have seen people weld a pipe to the drivers side manifold and were fine
you just cant have that big open area there
having or not having cats has NOTHING to do with how the car runs. They are
only there to save the earth if you go with no cats then it needs to be tuned for it
or have o2 simulators witch I have never had good luck with. I like them tuned out with
the tune if you cant do this with the x3 call sct and ask them how to do it.

 

[BAD97LSC]

derek you are fighting, you ask and ask and ask and ask and never do, do , do , do. you dont read either, you just asked if anyone has magnaflow cats, i just got done telling you that i have magnaflow cats, they are 3 years old and still look brand new, i have no problems what so ever. i am 100% with staff as i said to you in my pm, put a stock exhaust back on it with the 02's in there and go from there, you will just keep thowing money at this thing and never get anywhere and dont look to me to play doctor with that thing. you put a stock computer back in, that was a smart first step, now, put a stock exhaust back on, who gives a :q:q:q:q what your mustang had for exhaust and how it ran, this is not your mustang. your best bet is go all back to stock, get the car running the right way, then change things a little at a time, you keep doing so much with those tunes if i was your computer i would be :q:q:q:qed up too the way you play with it!

 

[Psychostang]

If I may put my .02 in here. It seems that no one has caught the fact that your code deals with the passenger front o2 sensor. This is bank 1 sensor 1. This is why you are having hesitations and what not. The sensor is seeing such a lean condition, that it is unable to switch. The sensor is either bad, or you have a vacuum leak somewhere on the right side of the engine. You cannot delete your front o2 sensors, you can only delete the rear o2's. Now, I've heard that the current generation of programmers, are not allowed to delete the rear o2's. I think this goes along with the EPA lawsuit a few years ago, against companies that manufactured the rear o2 simulators.

 

[slowmkviii]

good catch psycho i didnt even see that it said bank one sensor one

 

[ripped camel]

i have seen people weld a pipe to the drivers side manifold and were fine
you just cant have that big open area there
having or not having cats has NOTHING to do with how the car runs. They are
only there to save the earth if you go with no cats then it needs to be tuned for it
or have o2 simulators witch I have never had good luck with. I like them tuned out with
the tune if you cant do this with the x3 call sct and ask them how to do it.

One of the tunes in my programmer is directly from SCT themselves after I called them about the issues with the O2's. They said the program should be able to delete the rear O2's. Now after pyscho has pointed out the front O2 was the issue, maybe this whole time the problem wasn't with the rear O2's but the front. Crazy!

If I may put my .02 in here. It seems that no one has caught the fact that your code deals with the passenger front o2 sensor. This is bank 1 sensor 1. This is why you are having hesitations and what not. The sensor is seeing such a lean condition, that it is unable to switch. The sensor is either bad, or you have a vacuum leak somewhere on the right side of the engine. You cannot delete your front o2 sensors, you can only delete the rear o2's. Now, I've heard that the current generation of programmers, are not allowed to delete the rear o2's. I think this goes along with the EPA lawsuit a few years ago, against companies that manufactured the rear o2 simulators.

Thank you for catching that. I was wondering when someone would jump in and tell me exactly what the code meant. So is the front O2 before the cat?

I'll shoot out tomorrow and get a new O2. Should I avoid any specific brand? Is the front pass O2 hard to get to?

 

[Psychostang]

Whoa hoss. You don't know if its bad yet. Is your tuning device able to look at fuel trims? IF so, you want to look at both bank1 and bank 2 fuel trims. Both long and short term. This will tell you how much fuel the computer is putting in. Also, if you can monitor o2 sensors with it, you can see exactly what that o2 sensor is doing. Remember, you just might have a vacuum leak on that side of the engine. YEs, it is located before the cat. Some what difficult to get to.