'96 acting up in the extreme cold

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sprocket

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Here's the symptoms:

1) Hard to start. Requires putting the pedal to the floor.
2) After starting engine revs up to around 2000 as if to clear extra fuel. May drop down and die. May drop down then climb a little above 1000 the settle back to about 800.
3) Will die when I put it in gear. I then have to repeat 1 and 2 and it is just as hard to start.
4) While it is idling, engine temp will climb and with enough restarts and if it idles long enough it can get to the top of normal.
5) After idling for several minutes I may be able to get it into gear. I have to finesse the gas pedal a little. Power dropping it into gear doesn't seem to help.
6) Once in gear it stays running. Engine temp drops as I drive it around and ends up in its normal place. This car has a 180 thermostat.
7) Gets terrible fuel economy. It's probably off by like 6mpg or more.
8) Sometimes the RPM at a stop wants to climb above 1000, sometimes not. Engine temp will climb a little while in gear, at a stop.
9) If I take it out of gear and then leave it running while I go into the store or wherever I am at it may die when put in gear again. The temp will have climbed too. Then the whole process starts over.

What I have discovered so far:
1) I checked codes and there was a PO125 for insufficient coolant temp to go into closed loop. There were 2 O2 sensor codes but I think they were there before. PO161 was one of them I think. I should have wrote them down before clearing because I wasn't concerned before because the code from before was for after the cat but now I can't remember what they both were.

2) I found a leak in the air cleaner. The previous owner epoxied the holes shut for the resonators and the smaller one had a chunk missing. I was at a gas station when I discovered that so I duct taped it shut. I think it is holding but maybe not. I know that would cause serious running issues.

3) The coolant in the reservoir is NOT frozen.

4) When I got home just now, after driving it for quite awhile, I loosened the reservoir cap while the engine was running. There was no pressure. There was no hiss. I could stick my finger in the coolant (which was full) and it wasn't all that hot. Of course it is -15 outside.

I don't know what the problem is. Please help me if you can. Both my other vehicles would not start and I have one battery at the APS getting charged. Hopefully I can limp the Mark VIII there and back to get the battery and then the van will start.
 
Vacuum leak
IAC sticking
Fan working properly
thermostat stuck
Just some ideas to start looking

Do a pressure check on the coolant system and the cap too.
 
It's now running even richer. I'm getting about 14mpg on the highway and 11mpg overall. I was lucky to get home. Even if it restarts now I doubt that I can get it in gear without dying. When I got home I put it in park for a second and then tried to put it in reverse. It died immediately.

My guess? Check the codes again. Possible injector stuck wide open. Something is either telling it to run rich or it can't stop from running rich. It's immediate on start-up. That should say something. That should rule out a faulty O2 sensor and direct towards something that causes it to run rich and it can't adjust for it.
 
One other thing is that this car has no EGR. That has never been a problem before. There actually is an EGR valve (no EGR tube) but there is a block plate in front of it of my own making. Maybe somehow my block plate has failed in the extreme cold. I'm not sure how that would be a problem at highway speed though. But maybe that plate leaking is not the same as having the EGR valve stuck open. Maybe it's more like a big vacuum leak???:confused:
 
a leaking egr block will be a vac leak, lean condition.

how did you block the tube on the exhaust manifold?



p0161 is like an O2 sensor circuit failure, below minimum voltage, etc. not a rich/lean condition. O2 sensors failed totally? wiring burn up?

pull codes, write them down.
everyone should start there.
its silly to have on board diagnostics and not use them.
 
The EGR is blocked at the exhaust by welding the original nut shut and then reusing it. This has worked fine for a long time. I don't hear any exhaust leak. A faulty O2 sensor would not cause the engine to run dead rich at start-up because the O2 sensors don't do anything until they warm up. I'm not talking a little rich here, I'm talking so rich it's very difficult to start.

I don't have a code reader immediately available. I pulled the codes at the APS. I'm not sure I can even drive it there again.
 
It will be warmer in a few days. It will be above freezing by Friday. The soonest I could get it in a heated garage would be Friday. I have another car to drive. I wish my van would start. That needed a new battery and still wouldn't start. The starter in the van is smoking so I can tell it's on its last legs and is drawing all the juice. Too cold to change a starter.
 
Sprocket, did it feel like you had typed that before? Seems like a lot of the same issues you had with the DA.
I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't just the cold, frost in places where it shouldn't be causes all kinds of issues. My navigator took forever to warm up yesterday, even after 4 miles of driving around town and 30 min of run time she still didn't want to shift into overdrive on the freeway until I backed off the gas.
 
Not the same as the DA. The DA had back pressure in the coolant jug and major pressure in the cooling system even after just starting. I'm not losing any coolant....well, I should check it now. It is remotely possible that back pressure in the cooling system filled the jug and if the cap were junk there wouldn't be any pressure either. If the jug is now empty, I've got problems. I highly doubt that though. And the DA always got good fuel economy. There's something else going on here. It's probably just frozen up and needs to get warm.
We'll see what happens after the thaw on Friday.
 
Wait and see what happens Friday when it warms up. When they start the weather portion of the news and state that it is currently colder here than the surface of mars... That could be an issue.
 
It runs the same today and it is much warmer. It idles in park at about 800 but in gear it wants to surge. I could probably go at least 40mph with my foot off the gas. If I stop and put it in park and then back into gear it will die. I have to put my foot to the floor to get it to start again. The RPM will surge and then when it settles back it will want to die. When I feel it about to die I give it a little gas and the rpm surges again. If I repeat that a few times, then it will idle at 800 again. If I put it in gear it will die again. I have to wait for the rpm to settle at 800 then give it a little gas, wait for the rpm to start to come down, and then when it hits about 1200 I can drop it into gear, one foot on the brake and one on the gas ready to finesse the pedal a little to keep it running.

Tomorrow I will check some things. Pull codes, check vacuum, listen for any unusual sounds under the hood, pull all the plugs if needed to see if one or more are fouled, etc.

Anything else that's easy to check?? I hope I don't have to change the IAC.
 
The car is still running dead rich. I checked vacuum and it is good from a couple of different spots, one being at the FPR. I don't hear a vacuum leak. Currently I have two codes, P0306 and P0125. I'm sure the 306 code is just because it is running so rich that cylinder 6 occasionally misfires. P0125 is probably from a bad temp sensor so I bought a new one but haven't installed it yet. I can't believe the temp sensor would cause these symptoms. I can believe it would run rich because it is not in closed loop but not THIS rich. It's dead rich immediately upon start-up. The instant economy show 3mpg under acceleration at 40mph.

Well I'm going out to replace that sensor and check a few other things....
 
i've seen them wreak havoc, but not in these cars. a bad temp sensor is bad news in a taurus. thing will run terrible.
 
I did do two other things:

1) The small resonator had been removed from the air cleaner by the previous owner. The hole had been epoxied shut. When inspecting under the hood during the extreme cold weather I discovered that there was a small hole there. I duct taped the hole shut and wrapped all the way around the air cleaner with duct tape as a temporary fix. I'm 99% sure that took care of the leak. Today I removed the tape and plugged the hole properly.

2) I inspected the air filter which looked pretty good but maybe a little dirty. I blew it off with air and reinstalled it.
 
Coolant temp sensor and thermostat. Coolant sensor the computer is out of range the computer will dup fuel on start up to warm the engine, but once to operating temperature it will back off to normal fuel ranges. there are two, one for the gauge and one for the computer, u need the one for the computer, plus you thermostat is stuck open id say but replace the sensor first.
 
I didn't check the live data but in my case the defective temp sensor in theory could have been reading the coolant temp at -40. That would definitely cause the engine to run very rich.

It's running fine now.
 
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