Hey guys, great site, the tech mods are awesome! Makes me want to run to my Ford Wreckers and start right now!

I have a bit of a drama which is pretty annoying with my EF Falc. It has high K's (near 300k) but I think the motor has been replaced or at the least the head has been done, cause all the gaskets look really new, and it has no oil leaks...

My problem is this...

I regulary drive about 1hr on the highway at around 115-120, which is fine, but once I leave the highway and get a bit of traffic, I seem to develop a miss at idle. Its intermittent, but makes the car feel very rough.

The other problem is when I accelerate hard, there is a miss also, the easiest way to describe it is like a traction control, kind of shutting the engine down, with a noise similar to when a car hits a rev limiter. This miss is really annoying, specially when waiting for a gap in traffic.

I change the oil and filter ever 5k, have replace the fuel pump, fuel filter, plugs, leads, air filter to no avail.

Apparantley the EF's are bad for doing Manifold Gaskets, so that is my next thing.

My fuel economy seems to have dropped a little as well.

Cheers,

Peppy

the easy check for the manifold gasket is to put a vacuum gauge on it.
you should 19inches on the gauge.

double check the leads are on properly and make sure the pulgs are still good.

the EFs do have problem with a rough idle and there is not realy much you can do.

i had a vacuum prob but it didnt cause any probs when runnin, just idling, yea but check it anyway

mine went near cyl 6 or 1 (the one closet to firewall), and so have a few others

Thanks, Plugs and leads are less than 200k's old. Good quality Top Gun leads and NGK plugs.

Im not overly concerned with the idle problem but the more the miss (although I think they're one and the same)

Its really hard to explain, but ill try to give a more detailed example..

The miss seems to be more pronouonced either when the motor is cold, (first 10 minutes of running) or hot (after a hour or so at 110k's) particulary more so after 10 mins of stop-start roundabout crap.

Heres what happens

You come to a complete stop or slow down to less than 10-20k's (for instance, approaching roundabout, traffic lights)

From then on, if you accelerate hard, (half to full throttle) the motor just bogs down, it continues to accelerate, but not very well. It also will surge and give an audible 'popping' sound. It gives the impression of a flooded carby motor, this carries on untill around 3000rpm, where it will rev fine, unfortunaltey however, I dont spend a lot of time over 3000rpm.

It seems to be ok if you accelerate lightly.

yea, check vacuum or it could be dirty injectors

yeh from your description id say dirty injectors, or possibly a coil pack but my money would be on injectors

Have a good look with a torch and make sure all your vaccy hoses are hooked up properly - the hose off the MAP sensor will produce similar to what you've got, but that causes the engine to idle rough, if it will at all - so I doubt that's your problem.
Injectors seem to be likely as already described - some people vouch for the injector cleaner in the tank thing - good for preventative maintenance, but IMO for decent cleaning with injector probs, they need to be taken off the car.
http://www.fordmods.com/forums/viewtopi ... l+injector explains how to self clean your injectors - I've tried it and it seems to work well, but it may not work always. If you don't want to stuff around with them, better to get them cleaned professionally.

hi

do a cylinder balance test at idle , disconnect one injector at a time and try and pin piont which cylinder is missing you should be able to detect which cylinder is missing

then do the same at say 1500rpm ( adjust the throttle opening to maintain steady rpm) once again disconnect one injector at a time to determine which cylinder the problem lies

see what you come up with

a good cylinder is one that drops in ( high ) rpm when a injector is disconnected
a poor cylinder or miss fire one is one that the rpm doesnt change so much

you will notice how the engine runs

if you game enough you can do the smae with the spark plug leads disconnect one spark plug lead at a time but dont do it for a lengthy period of time or you could cause (DAMAGE ) a catalytic melt down by dumping raw fuel into it and secondly when you open circiut a high tension lead the igintion system draws more current to compensate for the open lead ( air gap) and hence over heating components.

you should be have some fun here

cya

dont open circuit the ignition system for very long at all because even 5 or so cycles can wreck an otherwise good coil pack...
i was skeptical of the on car machine setups until we got one at work... it plugs into the fuel lines and u start the car and it runs on pure injection cleaning stuff for like 30 min... seems to work better than off car we've found as it also cleans the inlet ports and the back of the valvesetc

hi

are we talking about carbon clean station ???

cause if we are my opinion is carbon clean is a waste of time

i have carbon clean at work and its a ok to a extent but what carbonclean people claim is not all true specially cleaming carbon build up on valves and piston crowns and so forth

i wish i could get my money back on the carbon clean sation cause it was the worst money investment i have ever made.

i have done back to back tests and carbon clean has lost credability with me.

I have my unit collecting dust in the corner of the workshop will not try to sell it to a customer of the street i always recommend on bench injector cleaning .

cya