So I've been driving a 03 escape for the last couple years. It's technically my parents but they were nice enough to let me suffer with it. It's got 175k on it, 3.0 duratec - auto - 4wd. It's a good size for the family at the moment and I don't mind driving a beater, but now that it's getting cooler and damp out it runs like shit in open loop. Once it warms up, it's good. It has a misfire code for a cylinder. I've done coils, plugs, valve cover gaskets, intake gaskets and tested all the coil wires and injector wires back to the pcm. It's definitely not hitting on more than 3-4 cylinders in open loop and doesn't have the power to hardly move unless you keep the revs up. You can feel the cylinders come online when driving, it goes from 50hp to 200hp. Until it's running right you have it baby it, to much pedal and it stumbles and wot rev. Put it in neutral and rev it and it'll clean up a little, if it's really bad a neutral drop will get it going.
Of course my dad bought this thing like this and gave up on it. Someone gutted the cats all 3 of them, and disconnected the egr, before he got it. He did dump about everything fix it on a bottle shit he could in it, engine restore, injector cleaner, Lucas, etc.
I'm thinking it's electrical since it doesn't run well when it's damp/cold. With the scanner hooked up everything seems to be reading normal. The o2 cycle, coolant temp, iat, maf, etc seem to be functioning as intended. It also takes forever to warm up in the winter, probably from not hitting on all cylinders.
My thoughts are:
Bad injector(s)
The emissions crap being deleted is freaking the pcm out
Valve seals allowing excessive oil into cylinders that doesn't burn off until it's warm
Or is just a complete pos
It's just one of those issues that I could drop a pile of cash in it and not make any progress. The wife doesn't really want me to waste my time on it, and I'm thinking she might be right. It's got some pretty good rust starting and leaks/burns oil. I change the oil about ever 1200 miles as it gets fuel contamination from not running right. But it drives great, rides good, and the a/c blows cold.
Of course the back cylinders are the ones with issues - so the upper intake has to come off to check anything and it's a pain in the ass.
Any ideas? Maybe it needs some hammer therapy?
I'm thinking it's time to replace it, as it sputtered randomly this morning on a left hand turn, if the road would have been busy it could have been bad.
