chaingang
Member
- Joined
- December 4, 2007
- Messages
- 22
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- B'ville GA
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 98 V8 & 04 Limited V8 4x4
A little background, 98 V8 2wd torque monster headers, 1 inch spacer, trans go shift kit, 189K miles. Has been running fine until yesterday. Has a miss when going down the road especially under a load. Hard to hear it when just idleing. Seems to free rev fine. Check engine light came on and then started blinking so I stopped at the parts store and had the codes read, P0401 EGR system fault and P0420 catalyst efficiency low bank one, catalytic convertor defective. The last one says one culprit could be due to a miss or runing issue. So I went back and got plugs since this was the easiest thing to do first. The plugs looked ok but seemed a little light, like a lean condition on the drivers side especially. Is this side bank one? It had not been long since these were replaced along with the wires(maybe 25-30K miles) but I replaced them anyway. Did not help a thing. But on the test drive I noticed something. I stopped and accelerated hard, full throttle. Doesn't seem to be down on power much and still chirped the tires hard on the 1-2 shift. But as I slowed down at the stop sign it smelled hot. Not hot like antifreeze or over heated hot just a strange odor. Gauges all show normal and the smell was more like an exhaust odor, didn't have a heavy rotton eggs smell but kinda like the catalytic convertors. It doesn't smell like that just running but I did it again just to confirm. Have not done anything else yet but figure on pulling the upper intake to check for vacuum leak and to help service the EGR. What about the convertors? Possibly plugged? One or both front ones or second set? Still have all four but considered cat back and removing the back two. What do you have to about replacing the front set? Ford only or will a parts store have this section of pipe. Tough to replace with the way it's bent up on the drivers side V8. Sorry for the rambling post, just wanted to get as much info ou there as possible.
