Camshaft Position Sensor???

[Wordwoman]

Turns out to be timing chain trouble

First of all, thanks to all who tried to help me with my problem. The mystery cranking and periodically not starting problem is probably still there. My problem is much deeper than that this time.

You wouldn't think it would be so difficult to buy the fuel pressure gauge some of you suggested, but I spent two days calling every auto parts place and Ford dealer around here with no luck. They all advised me to contact SnapOn Tools and buy their fuel gauge for about a hundred dollars. Forget that. After two frustrating weeks, I made a deal with my local Ford dealer to diagnose my problem for $84.

I got the news yesterday. They suspect a timing chain problem because there is no compression. I think they felt so sorry for me combined with making previous money on me for nothing that they didn't charge me anything in the end. They did say that it would be $480 to tear the engine down to see exactly what was wrong-----and probably $1200 to $2000 total for the repair. I went to other local repair shops who also wanted to charge the same thing.

Needless to say, I had the car towed back home (I should have these guys on retainer) and we have begun taking the engine apart ourselves.

The Ford mechanic also said that when I was taking it back to CarMax under warranty asking them to check the timing chain because of the sporadic "stagecoach" driving, it more than likely was the timing chain all along.

Because there are three timing chains, everyone is advising against tackling this ourselves. Since $2000 might as well be $20,000, this looks like it will be an experience. We once changed the timing chain on an 88 Plymouth Reliant, but in those days since you only took off the timing chain cover, it was an easy fix.

Wish me luck!
Marilyn

 

[Scott B.]

Take your time, label and/or bag every part you take off, and you will be fine. Get a good service manual, and it will walk through the job, step by step.

Buy only high quality replacement parts, and replace any questionable parts since you have them off (i.e., the water pump.) You may as well change your heater and radiator hoses, too (unless they are fairly new.)

Take some pictures, too.

Good luck, keep us informed.

 

[V8BoatBuilder]

Seems very familiar to the situation I had this spring: my 5.0 V8 was running rough and I ended up needing to remove the heads and send them out for a valve job.

I'd never tackled a project as big as this one before, and it sure took a lot longer than I expected or a dealer could have done, but it was worth every hour of wrenching in the garage.

My best tip is use lots of ziplock bags for everything. Label the bags. Make notes. Take photos. Get both a chilton's paper manual, and the Ford Factory shop manual on CD from ebay. You'll need a good torque wrench, I found the Husky 20-100lb/ft wrench at Home Depot was the best combo of accuracy and price. Have another vehicle to drive, and rock and roll. Be prepared for surprises though, I ended up crunching one of the head gaskets while re-installing the head and had to make an emergency run for another - luckily Autozone stocked them.

I bought parts from www.fordpartsnetwork.com , www.summitracing.com , Autozone and a few other 5.0 V* specialty places.

Check out what I went through here: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108712

I had some invaluable help from people on the board, start a new thread with a good title to get people involved.

 

[ander03]

I had the same problem with my sohc 4.0 it was the crank postioning sensor. ford has change it casing fir it cracks and then works intermintly

 

[cjbarron5]

If an engine has the right amount of fuel, spark at the right time, air, and compression, it should start. Am I missing anything?
Good luck. A solid no start is usually easier to diagnose than an intermittent no start like you have.

yes but lets get back to bare basics for a sec an engine requires air,fuel,and an ignition source to run something is not happening in your engine certain sensors help control diffrent parts of the 3 basics find out what you dont have or have too much of and then start checking the items related to that basic it could be a coil pack(i.e. no spark)a fuel pump relay(i.e. not enough or too much fuel) a MAF (i.e. not telling the computer its getting air) or a "sub" sensor. think of the sensors as a tree the PCM is the trunk and the sensors are branches which have more branches off of them the very top of the tree reports down through the "branches" untill it gets to the trunk. i hope i didnt confuse you this is how it was explained in school when we covered computer diagnostics hope this helps a little