Rough engine, Soot from exhaust, stalling, no power.

[Ford Airman]

First, I want to say HI! Great site.

Second, I wanna ask for some help. I have an issue. My vehicle is a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport 2D 4.0L SOHC V6. 146,000 Miles 2WD.

My issues are as follows. Today my wife and I hop in and drive 10 miles to best buy. Truck is running fine. Shifting fine, all is good.

We come out and go to start the truck and it fires up fine, then automatically stalls. Meaning I start it, it revs to 1500rpm then drops to nothing. So I give it some throttle, just a little, and I am able to keep it going. I noticed that I had some white smoke coming from the exhaust, not very thick, but it was there.

So I start to baby it down the road, double foot driving with right foot on gas left on the break to stop it because if I let off the gas when coming to a stop, it will stall. I notice that I cannot get it much past 2000RPM under load down the road and it really lacks power.

I parked it, we took back off in my Mustang and come back later. Now that the engine has had some time to cool, it now seems to idle, but not well. I reved it a bit in the parking lot, and I notice some black soot on the ground where the exhaust exits the back. Engine still does not run very good, when you give it a little throttle, it revs, but a lot of throttle it wants to spit and sputter and does not get RPM.

OK, I am no mechanic, but here are some facts about the vehicle.

it's been in my family sence new. I purchased it from my dad a week ago. he always changed the oil, maintained it, all that good stuff. Plugs/wires done 20K ago with motorcraft parts, o2 sensors done 7K miles ago, I have all service records from 224 miles till now. Heck, it's even got a new set of Michelins on her compliments of dear old dad!

Plenty of oil in the engine, coolant is good, air filter is fine and not plugged, NO service engine light is coming on, smells real rich at the exhaust pipe. we just got done driving this thing 1150 miles down to Shreveport from Michigan and had not one issue! Now this!

I know I am going to have to take it somewhere monday, but I was hoping for a little advice as to what this may be.......Thanks.

Ford Airman

 

[fixxxer]

Hi and welcome to the site Ford Airman,
white smoke and soot, that really sounds like two different issues. Soot is the by-product of running too rich, carbon and unburnt hydrocarbons built up inside the engine and exhaust system.
White smoke is usually the result of "burning" anti-freeze, oftentimes due to a warped or cracked head or a blown head-gasket allowing coolant into the combustion chamber. Take the sparkplugs out and give them a real good inspection. Pictures of the plugs posted on here would be ideal for us to help you troubleshoot your issue. Many engine issues will cause changes to the appearance of the plugs and will help in diagnostics.

 

[Ford Airman]

Thanks for your reply.

After reading your reply, my wife wanted to correct me on the smoke thing. She saw more of it then I did, I was more working the throttle and paying attention to the bouncing tach. She says that the smoke was more of a dark grey color, not white. I did'nt see it much. But she did, so thats about all I have to go off of.

I just started the engine a couple of minutes ago and it did idle on it's own. But it is miss firing for sure. When you rev it slow, it sounds fine, but when you jump on the throttle some, it hesitates to get RPM. Point being, it runs better then it did earlier today, but it still is not right.

Tomorrow, I will see if our base auto hobby shop is open and maybe I can pull it in there and yank a couple plugs out and see what they look like.(that does not look like a good time). Unless they are fried, which they should not be, seeing them is not gonna tell me much, but maybe it will point one of you in the right direction.

Thanks again. I appreciate any advice I can get.

Ford Airman.

 

[Team Persiani]

Same Issues

I have the same issues with my truck it makes you wanna think that somethings wrong with the fuel system, I replaced my fuel filter, spark plugs, and gave it an oil change then i tested my coil pack, and after doing all the above same problem occurred. So here was the problem My Mass Air Flow Sensor Was Bad Which made the truck sounding like it was miss firing and black suite out of the tail pipe and the rpms rev out and starting for like a few min then die when letting go of the gas. I am looking for a Mass Air Flow Sensor as we speak, what i did was switch sensors with a friend. Well hope thats the problem and good luck. There about $125.00 easy to install. P.S EBAYmotors has cheap sensors.

 

[fixxxer]

What white smoke means:
White smoke is normally a cause of anti-freeze burning in the piston cylinder. Normal ways for this to occur are a cracked head, blown head gasket,(warped head), or cracked cylinder block(normally uncommon).

What Black smoke means:
Black smoke is oftentimes a result of too much fuel and not enough air in the combustion chamber. In rare cases, it can be caused by weak fuel pressure causing fuel to 'drip' from injectors rather than 'spray'. It can also be caused by weak fire in the combustion chamber.

What gray smoke means:
Gray smoke is caused by brake fluid. It generally means that your brake master cylinder is bad, and is getting sucked through the vacuum brake hose.


What blue smoke means:
Blue smoke is generally caused by the burning of an oil in the combustion chamber. Normal causes of oil getting into the combustion chamber are weak piston rings, bad valve guides, bad valve seals, or plugged up engines where oil is sucked back through PCV system,usually due to lack of oil changes.

 

[Ford Airman]

Thanks guys. I appreciate the responses.

I went out this morning and started the truck, it runs MUCH better than yesterday, but it still is not right. It misses a little, but when I give it some gas it gets the RPM's a lot better. Now it's just acting like it needs a tune up. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm........

Our auto hobby shop is not open till wednesday. So I guess I am going to bite the bullitt and take it into the "Stealer" and see what they have to say about it. Hopefully they don't rob me to bad.

Thanks again.

 

[jlsparky7]

Could just be a bad tank of fuel as well. Did you fill up recently before the problem started?

Everything else was pretty much covered above.