with a 3.8 liter.
about a month ago, the guy calls me. his son is at school down in maryland with the van. it's got a cel on, sometimes flashing, but driving almost ok.....rough sometimes. he has the kid call me, and he explains exactly what's happening, which i tell him is a simple misfire. he asks me if he can drive it all the way back to here. i tell him he can, but he might want to look into repairing it down there, to avoid possible damage to the cats from the raw fuel being dumped.
he has it scanned, and calls me back with the codes.......p0300, and p0301. i explain what those codes are, and that it needs to be looked at to verify the cause of the misfire, but most likely is a simple plug swap, as the ignition wires were only 2 years old.
hadn't heard from them about that van till this past thursday. the kid took it to a goodyear down there
and they proceeded to rake him over the coals to the tune of almost $800. when i saw the list, most of it was unnecessary. but the cel had come back on, with p0301. they took it to a goodyear up here, due to warranty, and they told them that they needed to take the car to a ford dealer for a computer reprogramming
for this code.
they took it to the ford dealer right up the street from me. they ran tests on it, and tried telling them it may need an engine, as #1 was 7% low, and #2 was 2% low. i asked him if they told him what the compression pressures were, and he said no. he called them back, and they never even RAN a compression test.
they did the cylinder balance test through the scanner, which i've never found anything with. he asked me to look at it, so i did.
first thing i did, was run compression test. all cylinders were 125 to 150psi cranking, and at that point, i felt no need to do a running compression test. i did however find and fix his p0301 problem.
anyone wanna guess what it was?
