'89 Ford E-150 Van Stalling Out

mgrharry
Sun, 27 Mar 2011 20:38:11 +0000
Maintenance/Repairs

I’ve got a 1989 Ford E-150 conversion van has developed a stalling problem. It has a V8 5.0 engine. When the problem first occurred I felt the engine stutter and pulled off the road and as I rolled to a stop it stalled out. After letting it sit for a half hour or so it restarted and we were able to make it 40 miles into Austin, stopping about every 10 miles when we felt it start to die.

We took it to a mechanic and they replaced the MAP sensor and said that should fix the problem. When we picked the car up and started it, the engine sounded loud and it idled very roughly. We looked in the rear seat and the air filter assembly was just sitting on the floor and hadn’t been reinstalled. We pointed this out to the shop and they apologized and quickly installed it. We fired the car back up and turned on the radio which began to emit a horrible loud screech. We call the mechanic back over to look at it and he pulled out the stereo and checked the wires but couldn’t seem to figure out what was wrong. Here I must digress and state that the radio was home wired to a 500W amp by the previous owner and although it worked fine the wiring was ineptly done and the amp was powered directly from the battery so we’d had a switch installed under the dash to cut power to the amp when the car was turned off so that it wouldn’t drain the battery. The mechanic said he’d need more time to work on the radio and that he’d try to do it “as cheaply as possible” which immediately raised as red flag as the radio had been working fine when we dropped it off. Since we didn’t want to be charged extra for the radio fix we decided to just drive it back to our friends house and see if we could fix the radio ourselves.

About 3 miles from the shop the car stalled out again with the same symptoms we’d brought it in for. We had it towed back to the shop which was closed for the evening and left them a note describing what had happened and requesting that they fix the stalling problem and the radio as well. When we went to lock up the car we also noticed that the power locks no longer worked and we added that to our list. The next morning we called them first thing and they promised to get to the bottom of the problem. After delaying till the end of the day they said that it seemed like the catalytic converter was clogged and would have to be replaced. They explained that the bad MAP sensor was probably making the car run rich which had resulted in the clogging of the catalytic converter. This seemed to make sense and they said that they didn’t do the cat replacement themselves but that they worked with a muffler shop that could do the repair for $385 which was a discounted rate since they sent them a lot of business. The owner of the shop himself assured us that the catalytic converter was definitely bad and that while he couldn’t guarantee that would fix the problem it would definitely need to be replaced. That sounded fair enough (we called another muffler shop and got a quote of $450) so we went ahead and asked them to have that done the next day. They also said that they had fixed the radio by rewiring it direct to the speakers and cutting out our amp in the back (which we had asked them not to do) and that the power locks were just the result of a bad fuse.

The next day we called them several times and were assured that the car was going to be fixed within an hour or two, etc, etc, until it was nearly closing time and they finally called us and told us that the muffler shop had looked at it and it didn’t need a catalytic converter after all and that it was actually the muffler that was bad. They said the muffler had rusted out and collapsed inside and that the exhaust was trapped causing pressure to build up which was making the car stall out. We were a little skeptical since they had previously assured us the cat needed to be replaced and now they were telling us it was OK but felt like we had little choice in the matter since they had already cut into the pipe and removed the old muffler. They assured us that the muffler replacement would be cheaper than the catalytic converter anyways so we figured we might as well do it. They called us right before closing time Friday afternoon and told us that it was ready and had been test driven and everything was OK. When we arrived we paid the bill for the new muffler ($300!) and started the car up the idle did sound better and it was much quieter but the radio didn’t work at all. The owner came and fiddled with the wires for another half hour or so before finally tracing it to the drivers side door speaker wire which was shorting out somewhere inside the dash. He fixed it and we went on our way.

As we began driving out of Austin I noticed that the car felt as though it had lost some power and it seemed to be struggling, especially on hills but I thought maybe I was just being overly sensitive. About 60 miles north of Austin we felt the car start to hiccup and we immediately pulled into a gas station where it stalled out as we pulled next to the pump. We let it sit for 20 minutes or so and tried to restart it with no success. Eventually we were able to get it to drive a few blocks to a better parking spot where we left it for the night. The next day we had a mobile mechanic come look at it. When we told him the other shop had charged us $300 for the muffler he said ?wow, they really screwed you? and that the repair shouldn?t have cost much more than $100 especially since they just replaced the muffler itself not the whole tailpipe assembly. He checked a few things and pulled the temperature sensor which should have made the engine turn off and instead it kept running which he said meant the car was probably operating in “limp home mode” which might also explain the lack of power. After spending around an hour poking around and driving it around the block we couldn?t get it to stall. Overall he said he suspected either a bad master fuel pump or a bad computer and suggested that we get those parts at a junkyard for cheap and see if it fixed the problem. The other potential suspect he mentioned was the fuel filter or a bad coil. Since the car seemed to be running we figured we’d try and make it back to Austin and deal with the problem there. Driving back the weather was much colder and although it felt like the van was running poorly and misfiring it never stalled out and we were able to make it back to the city.

At this point we don’t want to put much money into the van but it seems like a waste to have to sell it at a big loss since it’s only marginally drivable.

Any thoughts?

27 posts - 6 participants