Well yesterday I went out at 1:30 to smoke, everything worked fine. Went back out at 3:30, and it wouldnt start. I t would just crank and crank and crank, like it wasn't getting fuel. Poped the hood, looked around, all looked good. Went to the passanger side to check the inerta switch, and it was fine, shut the door, and the hood fell, and I was done with my smoke, so I went over to the drivers side to try it again. It fired up no problem. I shut it off, and tried again, no go, wouldn't even crank. I go out at 5:30 to go home, and hope it works. Nope, nothing. So I call my Dad to see if he can help. He gets there, and we check to see if it is getting fuel, it is, check the spark, it is getting on, but it is a yellow spark, real weak. It is doing the crank and crank and crank, but no fire thing again. We hook it up to his truck to jump it, thinking the battery is dead. No go. Call Ford Road Side assitance, he puts it on the jump box, and it wont do anything, and the volts don't even drop when you go to start it. Also the "theft" light is flashing like a ****. So he takes it to the dealer, and they worked on it today. I call around 4:30 and they say it is ready, I go get it, and drive over to my parents house to get some stuff I put in his truck, and sit over there for awhile. I leave, and it fires right up. Get going down the road, and less than 500' down the road, the warning lights start flickering, and then go solid, and it dies. It will crank again, but not fire. Finally the battery dies down, and it wont do anything again. Call Ford Road Side, and they tow it back to the dealer. They told me today that the computer lost the PATS info, and they "reprogramed" it, but it seems to have lost it again. I really don't trust the dealer, casue they tried to blame it on things I have done. First they said it was casue I swaped the gauge cluster, which I havn't, I have the stock Tremor white gauges it came with. Then he tried to say it was my LCD screen, and couldn't come up with a vaild reason why it was. Then he said I meesed it up with the OBCII code reader I was using after it had problems, so I could see if it was throwing any codes, which it wasn't. Finally he backed off, and just said that he had never seen anything like that before. If you guys have any ideas please let me know.


Christan if you read this, I know you had problems with yours, please help.

 

mine wouldn't crank at all... no nothing...

your problems don't sound like mine...

 

Do you have an apten or other performance chip.
A loose connection can cause problems as you described.

Oh and if it was the pats... it wouldnt even turn over generally.
You turn the key to start and it sits there..... doing nothing.

Rand

 

He took it the superchip out, and nothing....

 

did derek8819 touch it again?

 

ouch!! low blow.....lol

 

They even stole his water bottle....damn.


Jon, tried resetting the electronics by removing the Neg. cable?

One day, I played with the MAF, made it mad, and the truck wouldn't start. Popped the cable off, waited a while, put it back on and it ran fine.

 

Funny how unpluggingit and plugging it back in again fixes just about anything electronic.

 

mine acted real crazy like that last week...it was the battery. remember how i couldn't wait for my battery to fail so i could get a red-top to make my engine bay look even prettier? be careful what you wish for...lol. it did, i did, and it does.

 

I didn't say it was a cure-all....just a suggestion.

Believe it or not though, at Nissan that philosophy often holds true, even with the $300,000 robotics systems. Crazy.

 

what fixed my problem, after they replaced most electircl stuff uner my dash and steering column: maf replaced

 

Just put a switch on PIN 55 of the PCM. Then you can clear KAM all you want without messing with the battery cable.

 

Well Ford called, said a sensor on the cylender that reads the info from the key had gone bad. Said it was getting signal after sitting for a long time, but then it would crap out after working for awhile. I told them to keep it overnight, and mess around with it tommrow and see what it does.

 

Heres an interesting tidbit: We (MRC and I) took a break from work today to testdrive a new 04 FX4-II, and it didn't have a PATS key.

 

Yeah, on the 04's they went to some sort of new system, cause the PATS system they use sucks ***. If anyone remembers Ricky who lived out in Cali and had the Red XLT that was bagged with the edge front clip, and remembers that it was stolen, well the best way they can come up with is that someone got his VIN, and was able to have key made to open the doors, and have the right chip to be able to start it up.

 

Chipped keys suck IMO. Because I have the 2.5L, my truck got plain old keys. I'm kind of glad. It didn't have a spare key when I got it...got a key for $2. It is probably less secure, but it doesn't have any of the PATS problems.

 

Well Gary was right, and I followed his action.

Ford called this morning to let me know my truck wouldn't start again, surpirse surprise. The said the battery was bad, and for $115, they would install a new one with a one year warenty, I said bump that and went and got an optmama red top. Seems to run fine now, we shall see.