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Topic: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down***SOLVED (Read 9734 times) previous topic - next topic

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down- *****SOLVED WE THINK!!!

Reply #90 –
we discover that if we disconnect the battery negative,  the car dies........... so.. bad alternator also.

its odd how all these things are running us in circles.

will have alt tested again by advance.... if they say its a good alt,, it proves their tester is not testing for everything.

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down

Reply #91 –
Put a new or known good alt in there and let us know.

Is this car a V8 swapped TC or was it a V8 from the factory? I ought to remember, but can't.

If it IS a swapped TC, maybe the headlight harness is shaged. The TC used a different headlight harness than the V8 cars....if it was modified.....perhaps something is amiss.

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here, too. I don't know.

But if the car acts up when the headlights are on, then something with that is way the hell out of place.
'84 Mustang
'98 Explorer 5.0
'03 Focus, dropped a valve seat. yay. freakin' split port engines...
'06 Explorer EB 4.6
 

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down

Reply #92 –
car is factory 5.0L,,

new alt installed.

no change.

the issue is this.....
-if the car is started, and gas is applied to around 2 to 3 k rpm,, the engine will cut out and sputter.
-if we add headlamps,,, this will increase "amplify",, not "cause" the issue.  I say this because after several senerios of testing, this has become a fact.
******as a result of failing, the cause is spark becomes absent.
******we see this by having a test light on the coil green wire to chassis or across the coil to observe a strobe.
******the strobe is broken up or blinks some or not at all at around 2 or 3 k rpm.
it fails with or without headlamps.
we lose spark and as a result lose tach signal.
yesterday after new alt (BRAND NEW), was installed and we failed again, we moved on to this.....
-kept headlamp sw disconnected,
-disconnected multifunction sw
-retested and car still fails.

today we will.....
disconnect every single item in the car that we can to get to by fuse or connector till the situation is the car has only what it needs to start and run.
if problem is the same,, we may just make an assumption that ..............
-the EEC is failing to "manage the engine"
-the maf is bad ~although when we test it with our meter it seems to be doing fine.

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down

Reply #93 –
focusing on why the car turns off when the battery negative is disconnected while engine running........................

disconnected EEC
-pin 20,40,60 all tone good to chassis
-pin 49 ad pin 6 also pass

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down

Reply #94 –
we are retesting old spots.

start car...............
we hook a test light up from chassis to the red input of the coil primary.
strong constant light

while running , we hook a test light up from the chassis to the green of the coil primary

this causes the car to stall out and die.

we unhook the spout connector and get the same results.


Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down

Reply #95 –
Just checked back in, I havent read the whole thread yet, and I know you said in your orignal post that you replaced the coil. But symptoms sound a bit like you might have a bad secondary coil winding that is aggravated by either heat(expansion causing a gap or break in coil's internl winding) or strain of additional rpm above idle and/or additional vehicle electrical loads (headlights,etc) robbing enough of coil's input voltage to make it act up due to faulty internal winding.

Depending on how intermitent the problem is you can try to ohm it out with engine/coil cold and then again when warmed up or try a known good coil off similar car if you have one. The foxbody coils are all interchangeable.

 I would not remove batt cables with engine running, it can hit the alt's voktage regulator pretty hard and if the regulator doesnt dig it, it can send a nasty voltage spike through vehicles electrcal system that will smoke your ecu, radio, or any other  thing it feels like eating.

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down

Reply #96 –
yeah,,
if the battery is in a load state, that is very true.  we are troubleshooting now using the coil as a visual reference for the reference ground.

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down

Reply #97 –
we may have this solved.

4 distributors and 5 TFI modules later..
the root cause seems to be the suppliers for Advance Auto.

one trip to Autozone today for a dizzy and all is well.

no issues at all.

we will button up all the mess we have caused chasing our tails and test hit tomorrow evening.

stay tuned.

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down***SOLVED WE THINK!!!

Reply #98 –
confirmed,,,

root cause was the supplier "advance auto parts".

Problem solved using Autozone as the supplier.

car up and running great now.

thank you all for the help

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down***SOLVED

Reply #99 –
Glad to hear it. Advance might need to tighten up a good bit on their suppliers.

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down***SOLVED

Reply #100 –
Wow! all  that because of py new parts!!!  I usually don't go to Advance, now I will definitely stay away.
Mike

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down***SOLVED

Reply #101 –
I went through 4 MSD pro billet distributors from Orielly all cutting out above 2000 rpm before I finally bought one from american muscle and its been in the car for 2 years now with no problems, since then I've always carried a spare "known good" distributor in the trunk just in case.

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down***SOLVED

Reply #102 –
Had same problem as Dog with MSD billet distributor and had their 6AL box fail after only 3 years use.  The old joke was the MSD acronym stood for May Suddenly Die. Got rid of all MSD stuff except for window switch for nitrous.

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down***SOLVED

Reply #103 –
Quote from: Outsidedog – on
I went through 4 MSD pro billet distributors from Orielly all cutting out above 2000 rpm before I finally bought one from american muscle and its been in the car for 2 years now with no problems, since then I've always carried a spare "known good" distributor in the trunk just in case.

I find the content of your message compelling...
your exact description is the very symptom we had. 
Couple that symptom with the visual indication of our tach dropping to zero during the cutting out event.
We stumbled on a stang thread stating a similar situation but the gent doing the thread mentioned he got fixed only after "4 dist's later and finally" he got his up and running which he later pointed to the box store as the source of all his headaches.

we all should be building a contingency plan for future TFI failures.

Re: 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down***SOLVED

Reply #104 –
I just went back and read the post, this exact story happened to me a few years back when I converted my car to HO and replaced the distributor for some reason I can't remember. I still have 4 or 5 tfi modules laying around somewhere taken apart before I started replacing  the distributors. At one point I also had a cap leaking and would drop my tachometer out at higher rpms and misfire/cutout, that's a fun one when you find it by adjusting the timing and get bit multiple times by 40kv. I wish I would have read your post sooner! I would have mentioned all that.