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Ford Explorer Community - Maintenance - Modifications - Performance Upgrades - Problem Solving - Off-Road - Street
Explorer Forum Covers the Explorer ST, Explorer Sport, Explorer Sport Trac, Lincoln Aviator, Mercury Mountaineer, Mazda Navajo, Ford Ranger, Mazda Pickups, and the Ford Aerostar
ok, so a quick look at Tim's sct and I could see the pad that goes in-between the connectors on the firewire input was missing on mine. That would explain the 'shorting out' on the pins.
It's a surface mount connector.
No luck finding one locally, so I ordered from Digi-Key. I hope shipping doesn't take very long.
Lets see if my old eye's and shaky hands can still do this stuff.
I had that plastic thing between the terminals break on an Xbox 360 controller port (old non pro system). The console I got for my girlfriends kids to play on.
When they went to plug in a controller it would shut off. LOL. It was USB so I got a rear mount USB add on slot thing for a Home computer that had wires going to a connector. I mapped all the wires/terminals out and soldered it in. It worked great for years. LOL.
I am sure you can do it!
I think the 'shorting' of that connector hurt my wideband. It seemed to be reading way off. I actually asked Decipha for help thinking it was my Tune I couldn't seem to dial in (Wideband and narrow bands were conflicting, confusing the crap out of me). I'll try to get to this tonight.
So now, I'm at least dialed in to where I can see the narrow bands working. I think I have a cylinder not firing, as my bank1 and bank2 fuel trims are about 20% off. More work to do here now. I think an injector isn't firing, and it's probably a wiring issue. Weather turned too cold for me to want to troubleshoot (Truck running with garage door open = cold). Tomorrow is warmer, so I'm hoping I can make headway with this tomorrow night
I also had an issue with the drivers side header fitment. It was too close to the steering shaft and the bolt and nut were binding against the header when turning the steering wheel. It was actually so bad, the steering wheel did not want to turn at all. I had to grind down the nut, and both sides of the bolt. I think Bob's jig must have been off when this header was made.
Progress is slow, but at least I'm in to the troubleshooting side of things now.
Man, that is a bad spot for clearence issues too. I really do not see a way to change that bolt location up, w/o modifying the steering shaft in the column itself.
I wasn't very happy about what I did.
I was so unhappy about what I was doing, I plunged the grinder cutting disk in to my thumb. No need to ask me how that felt (feels). I'm sure you can imagine.
Now, I have to be very careful till my talking thumb seals up. Anyway, I sure showed that header I was pissed off. lol.
I didn't have much for options. I could have emailed Bob the issue, and he could build me another header, and delay things at least a month, or do what I did. I used some loctite on the bolt, just in case.
Ouchy. A dremel and grinding stone next time for sure!
Most of us have done that, and understand the pain, & frustration.
Short of replacing the header, a 1" body lift would help, and give extra room to work on near the fire wall, but that goes against the grain of a street build. But, it would allow for some larger aggressive winter tires.
And, Its a 4 cylinder engine. I'm surprised it ran so smooth.
I'm sure there is an injector positive missing for the drivers side injectors(Grounding keys the injector if I remember correctly).
Spark is at the cylinders, and the fact its the whole bank, it must be a common wire to all 4 injectors.
It's funny, as my wideband is in the drivers side bank (Bank 2). I bet it was working perfectly the whole time.
The injectors are on a common power wire, but with individual ground trigger wires. To have several injectors not firing, it would need to be on one side for that single red power wire, or the signal wires coming from the PCM. Have you already double checked the main wiring connector terminals, taken it off and looked for depressed terminals etc>
This is where the fun starts.
I, of course, cant check the wiring reliably without pulling the upper intake. Bad news is that I havn't found the issue yet.
here's what I did so far.
Diagnose miss:
1. remove and replace 1 plug wire at a time. On bank 1, there was an idle change on all four cylinders, As I pulled the wire, there was good sparking.
2. remove one plug wire at a time on bank 2. No change of idle on any of the four cylinders. Good spark as I pulled each plug wire at the coil pack.
I concluded bank 2 is not firing.
Looking for issue:
1. Remove upper intake.
2. unplug the 4 injectors, put a meter on 12v of the first injector connector and power up the truck. Verified 12v (I was surprised). Did the same for the 3 remaining injector connectors. 12v was on all of them. This is not good I'm thinking.
3. Find the pcm trigger pins on the pcm connector and check with ohm meter between the pcm and injector connector. They are all ok.
5=pin 73
6=pin 99
7=pin 72
8=pin 98
All good.
I then plugged in the injectors and checked the impedance across each injector between VCC (12v to each injector) and each of the 4 pcm pins. All four checked out at 12 ohms. Ok, whats going on? Everything testing ok.
Next: Check for fuel pressure at the fuel rail. Yup, loosen the line at the fuel rail, run the pump...Fuel spits out. Chercks ok.
So, what next? Put it back together and see if I have all 8 cylinders firing I guess.
If I'm still missing the cylinders, I think I can get a listening stethescope probe against the front injector and listen for it pulsing.
Bank 2 is definitely dead. The headers don't get hot.
So, I Checked for pulsing at the pcm. at 4 easy cylinders to get to. Cylinders 2, 4, 6, and 8.
With the truck running, I could see my meter pulsing on cylinders 2 and 4 (Bank 1). On cylinders 6 and 8 (Bank 2)....No pulsing.
I was also able to get my stethoscope on injector 5. No noise coming from it at all. Bank 2 injectors are not firing.
That and.....When the steering shaft bound against the header, it pushed the shaft way over and now I need a clock spring. I think thats the least of my issues right now.
I'll return my existing pcm to stock, then marry the sct device to the new pcm. No issues with tuning,
Yea, its more than a bit frustrating. I'm just concerned as to what caused the pcm to loose bank 2. I can't see any wiring issues (Everything is nice and neat, and I disconnect the positive when I'm working).