Hey guys, I went out to start the truck tonight and as soon as I started it I knew something wasn't quite normal. The truck idled rough, almost like it had a slight miss. I could also tell it was lacking some power as well, based on how it had to downshift to maintain speeds when it normally doesn't have to. Also when I was in reverse while not accelerating, you could really feel erratic/rough engine operation, not smooth at all. There was no CEL, and I haven't done any work to the truck recently. I'm going to avoid driving it in case its the Ford Famous injector or a spark plug issue. The spark plugs were replaced under warranty about 20k miles ago, and the truck has 60k on it now. Any ideas?

 

I would be thinking an injector is going bad. Mine ran rough about 2 weeks before the injector failed. CEL came on but turned off after about 10 minutes.

 

Well went out this morning and truck did the same thing, you can definately tell theres a miss, so it's not a fluke. I didn't drive it, I'll be taking it to the dealer this week. I'll let ya'll know how it turns out.

 

Don't ignore it. If I wouldn't of ignored the problem I probably could of just replaced the injector instead of the entire engine.

 

Change the fuel filter lately?

 

The fuel filter was about only about 13k miles old, but I had one in the garage so I went ahead and changed it tonight. Damned if the miss went away. Usually I've seen fuel filters cause gradual power loss and rough idle, but I've never seen an engine go from running fine one day to missing/running rough the next(without even adding fuel). Oh well, lesson learned. The fuel pressure on these things must be very sensitive. I cut apart the fuel filter and really didnt seem all that dirty from what I could tell.

I'm still taking it in to the dealer tomorrow for a brake hose recall, I may mention it to them. Thanks for the replies.

Ronnie

 

Pretty inexpensive fix! Congrats. I need the brake hose job done myself.

 

I noticed you were from Virginia. did you suffer from the gas shortage back a few months ago after the hurricane like we did here in NC? When the tanks went empty, we all lined up at the hope of a truck, some cars filled up while the truck filled the tank which stirred up the trash in the tanks through the pumps and into your tank. The gas the southeast received during this time period was very dirty. BUT thats why the fuel filter is there.

 

Thats the way it was here after Katrina. All of the gas in my town was reserved for FEMA use.

 

My CEL came on due to a dirty fuel filter. My truck ran no different, sounded the same, but it felt like a major mass of low end had vanished.

 

Not sure when the last time it was changed. I will try it and see. Not sure that would explain the weird noise, but worth a shot.

 

Yeah Patrick, it would be a good idea to change your fuel filter, but did you know that this thread is 9 years old?