2003 Ford Escape v6 110,000 miles. Starts in the morning, starts after an 8 hour work day, but If I drive for about an hour (especially in warmer weather), turn it off, and try to start it up again after about 10-15 minutes of sitting, it will turn over but not stay running. Putting my food on the accelerator keeps the engine going, but once I remove my foot from the pedal, the engine dies. The car has to sit for about an hour (sometimes 2) before it will start up again.
Been happening for about a year, worse in warmer weather, fuel filter was changed, but it didn’t help. Mechanic said nothing came up on diagnostic check and no warning lights come on. Any ideas?
idle control valve or bad fuel tank venting would be my guess.
I’ll avoid another angry rant about mechanics who can’t diagnose anything unless a computer tells them what the problem is, other than to say you didn’t take it to a mechanic - you took it to a monkey.
Fuel pump is my guess. You know what causes it to happen, get the system checked while in failure mode. Stop by a mechanic when failure mode is probable and it can be diagnosed then if it fails to start. In response to shadow No lights ever showed up on ours, 2 tows to the dealer and no codes and started right up, failure mode diagnosis found the fuel pump to be the problem, 03 ford fixed under warranty.
Took it to a different mechanic today and he said they traced it to the idle air control valve and it will run me about $350… reasonable?
So far so good. It’s been a week and I haven’t had any problems with it starting back up. Total was $384.00
Did that fix it? I’m having the same problem…
Yes, swapping out the idle control valve fixed the problem… I think $384 was a little high though but I think the mechanic I took it to was a little steep on labor charges…