Hello everyone, thanks in advance for reading this!


I have a 99 Ford Taurus 3.0 DOHC with 100,000 miles on it. Historically Ive had very little problems, but lately ive ran into something that mine turn big.


I just compleated a cross country drive where I had no problsms till the end. I went to start the car in the morning, and it sounded like it was missing...running a little rough...Never hearing that before, I turned it off... restarted it and it didnt do it again... Over the next few days it steadily became more frequent untill now it has the following symptoms,,

1- Idles rough
2- Loss of power
3- More exaust now.
4- Low Idle.. about 500 rpms
5- Check engine light is on, but sometimes when the idle is real low it will blink.

So far ive Changed the plugs out, with no differnce... and I just bought new plug wires which Im going to change in a bit. I took the car to autozone to get my codes read, and they were unable to pull the,... the machine errord out.


Any ideas folks??

This doesn't sound unlike a blown head gasket. Is this new exhaust white by any chance? Another thing is to look for oil in your coolant or coolant/water in your oil, and/or do a compression test. Other symptoms include gurgling/bubbling in your radiator or degas tank. Unfortunately, this would be a pretty expensive repair (virtually all labor) unless you are enough of a mechanic to do it yourself. If you detect these symptoms, it would be wise to stop driving the car. Your catalytic converter doesn't like the coolant going through it; it's also bad for your O2 sensors.

OK, after reading that post... worried, I went and checked the things mentioned:

1- Oil is clean and good... was changed before I left to drive across... so 3500 miles later its still clean...
2- No bubbles in coolant..and coolant is fairly clean...

Exaust isnt terribly white...

Heh, didn't mean to scare you.

I would say you would definitely like those codes read. But sure, go ahead and change the wires; it won't hurt anything.

Heh, didn't mean to scare you.

I would say you would definitely like those codes read. But sure, go ahead and change the wires; it won't hurt anything.


One thing I will add that might be related...is that I tend to lose alot of coolant... and I was thinking I had a leak somewhere... but I cant seem to find it anywhere....
The exaust is slightly white..but not much at all...

I looked at my current wires and theyre clean and strong... and like i said my plugs have been changed... anything else it could be??

My Taurus did some weird things when the gaskets were going too. I never saw smoke, never lost coolent, and never had dirty oil but it was the gaskets. It sounds like your gaskets are going to me though. What does the exhaust smell like? If it smells like anti-freeze thats where you are loosing it which is head gasket related.

Yeah the more you say, the more it sounds like a head gasket. If you're losing coolant, then you have either a leak or a bad degas tank cap, or else you have a blown head gasket. And the gasket is the only one of those things that explains the poor running. I've never had one replaced but I would imagine it will run you several hundred dollars at a dealer.

Lets just say, it was $1,500 to get mine replaced, so I opted for an engine swap which was the same amount but of course the regulater decided to go, so I just sold the peice.

i got a 97 taurus SHO and well it wont start right now a few days after i jsut replaced teh starter and it worked for teh feew days and then it stoped so i probed teh starter and the remote wire that should only have power in the crank position dosnt get power at all so i went n gota a new starter relay only thing is idunno where to put it there is 3 black boxes that all look the same, ok thats teh 1st problem, 2ndly when i do hav it running, if i am stoped at a red light or jsut stoped holding the break my RPM's like to dance, the needle drops from its idle at 800 down to 4000 and then up to 1300 and back to 800 n 500 and soforth,and while they are dancing my car shakes and jolts any ideas? i just replaced teh spark plugs today bought injector cleaner, maybe that will help, but when i make a left turn and hit the gas to pull threw teh turn my tranny likes so disengage and it pops back in to gear when i strighted out, could that be relative to the dancing RPMs? the RPMs dance when i hav my foot on the gas too but not accelerating, idunno if it could be my torque converter or sumting else so help me please

Welcome to the forum, now please review the forum guidelines that you agreed to when signing up. If you are not familar with how to access the guidelines, the link is http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/guidelines.html

Please create a new post since your post has been added to a seemingly unrelated thread, which is also two years old. If you need help with moving your post to a new thread, let me know and I'll take care of that.

Also, per the forum Guidelines, please use proper punctuation. Your post is quite difficult to read since there is no indication of where one thought/sentence ends and the next begins.

Since I don't want to completely discourage you to the forum, the rough idle is probably due to a faulty coil or two on your engine. You SHO V-8 has a Coil-On-Plug (COP) design which means you have one coil per cylinder. In the time I had my '98 SHO, I had 3 coils go bad and two of them were in bank one (firewall side). Surprisingly, they aren't too bad to replace (less than 1 hour hood up to hood down). Since you've replaced the spark plugs, you already know what it takes to get to the coils.

I'll wait until I can read your thread and understand your thoughts to address the rest of your questions.

-Rod

I don't know if it would help but I know when my Taurus was having idle issues (its a 92 tho) we turned up her Idle Control Speed and now she's running fine

i know when the cel flashes it is a catalyst damaging misfire. check everything from plugs to injecters. and maybe compression

For bibowj: A plugged catalytic converter will cause those symptoms but the white exhaust is steam/water. If the coolant reservoir level goes down significantly you should have a water puddle under the vehicle and if not then it is going out the exhaust through a blown head gasket. Have you stood behind the car after you crank it in the morning and look to see if water is leaking out the tail pipe? Go to the auto parts store and ask for the coolant aditive that turns a color if there is exaust gases in the coolant and that way you know if your problem is in fact a blown head gasket.
Why did it blow? Overheating is the number one cause of blown head gaskets.

Rough idle can sometimes be cured by cleaning the mass air flow sensor, but my guess is your problem goes a lot deeper than that. Good luck and welcome to the forum.

Take your car to a qualified repair shop, or the dealer, and have them do a leakdown test to confirm, or not, a blown head gasket... hopefully it is okay..

you will get water and steam out of the exhaust first thing in the morning from the condesation as the exhausts heats up it burns it off. if it continues throughout the day then you have a problem. you can smell it if it is burning coolant out the exhaust. the chemical test is called a hydrocarbon leak tester. and you may be able to do it. it is pretty easy just follow the directions

I noticed you said that the scan tool errored out as you were trying to read the codes. That makes me think that maybe the problem may be your motor controller going bad. That hickey is a can-shaped item located under your cabin air intake, which is on the passenger's side on the firewall. Keep trying to read the codes and if you're getting nowhere, try replacing that thing. I hear it's kinda pricey though.:eek: