Hello,
I have a Ford Escape 2004 FWD with 95,000 miles. I have done all factory maintenance on this car as needed. But from the last year when the car miles were at 85,000, the car would not restart in summer time. For example, I drive the car for about 20 minutes to the grocery store and when I come back to the car after 5 minutes, it would not restart. Then I put the new battery too. But It still wont restart in hot weather. If I leave the front hood open for 30 minutes to an hour, It would start again (may be after all the hot air escapes, I think the hot air build up from engine is not escaping).
The coolant is full and I have done the coolant recirculation cleaning with the air compressor (mechanics at jiffy lube did that), but again my car would not restart when the whether is hot, it would start again if I leave the front hood open for 30-60 minutes. The mechanics at my repair shop cannot figure this out and I wasted $400 on it for them to figure it out. Please help and thanks a lot!!!
You need to check and see if the ignition system is working the next time this happens. This kind of trouble is usually due to a problem in that area. There are several ways to make sure spark is getting to the plugs. One simple way is to use a non contact voltage sensor that can fit in your shirt pocket and electricians use to verify hot wires. Getting one of those within a foot of a working plug wire will light it up. If you find that the ignition system is at fault the first thing to do is verify power is getting to the system and go from there if you need to.
The other scenario is a faulty fuel delivery system in which case starter fluid would help prove that but I think your case you will find there is a ignition problem causing this trouble.