Hi guys,

I have been helping a friend with his race truck build this past week and he is having some trouble with his engine running "properly". I have been reading the manual, scouring the forums, downloading, testing... I'm still stumped. I'm brand new to Rangers.

Here's some facts:

1. 1987 2.9L Fuel Injected
2. Fuel Cell, New Inline fuel pump and new regulator set at 40 psi
3. Timing light is showing currently 12°BTDC

4. Truck starts and runs nice for about 3-5 seconds then runs like ****

5. If the fuel rail is pressurized to 40psi fuel, the truck is drowning in fuel. Seriously, we've had flames coming out the exhaust and a fire in the muffler (Scary). But you can rev it up and it revs ok, but kinda burbly. The gas must be washing down the pistons becasue the oil looks thin and smells like fuel.

6. Switched the ignition over to MSD, problem stayed the same. Added noise filter to MSD anyway. Stayed the same.

7. If fuel pump is off, idle smooths out - but crack the throttle even a little bit and it will die.

8. Tried running fuel pump from a second battery COMPLETELY isolated from the truck electrical to eleminate the possibility of intereference. Same problem, I mean, you run the fuel pump for 0.5 sec and the engine almost dies. Turn it off and it starts to smooth out.

9. There is no airbox, air filter ANYTHING in front of the throttle body yet.

10. The vac lines are a bit of a mystery, but mostly good. The vac tree at the firewall has plug except the fuel vac line and the Master Cylinder vac assist. the MAP sensor is connected and the other vac line off that sam fitting is going to that other little plastic solenoid. The other side of the plastic solenoid goes to nothing and the egr diaphragm. This part is messed, but not sure what goes where. I coud use more than the stupid diagram, if somone has some pics of their vac lines I would be greatful.

11. The harness has been butchered a little. I had to hack into the harness to add the diagnostic wires back in so I could plug a code reader in.

12. All the sensors seem to read about 5V no matter what. The supply to the TPS:5V, the return voltage no matter what you do with the throttle ~5.0V. MAP same, ECTS Same.

13. Here's the codes the EEC-IV kicked out:

51-
22-
53-
54-
34-
67-

Help, we've got our first race on Sunday that leaves 3 days to get this sorted. I could really use someone familiar with these trucks to lend some advice. I'm going to post this on another forum as well, but will not cross post it within this forum.

Yes pics of the truck will be forthcoming! Cheers!

Paul

 

Wirelessly posted

9,10 and 11 are your issues

 

1. Very Useful
2. Not very useful
3. A needless waste of bandwidth
4. Moronic
5.Thoughtless
6. Idiotic
7. Myopic
8. Not helpful

2,5 and 8 are yours.

 

Wirelessly posted

Hope nobody helps you

 

well thats cute..

 

no need to be a dick for someone trying to point you in the right direction....

Here is my good deed for today, take it as whatever you want, or drink bleach. Either one.

9- put the air intake back on genius... if you dont have one, go to a junk yard and get one
10- fix the vaccum lines like Ford had them. If you don't know, go to JY and make yours look like one that hasn't been ****ed with.
11- Ford had it one way for a reason.... To work. The hack job **** never works. Put it back the way it was from the factory.

that is all.

 

LOL, ya I thought so.

I know that the other guy that hacked up the truck should not have, but it's pretty much back together now. I'm new on the scene just trying to repair it back to running and was looking for a suggestion beyond "the modification is the problem, if it was stock it would work" no kidding.

I believe that it may be his sensor inputs have been damaged by lots of welding on the truck with the ECC attached. The sensors reading 5V regardless of what the operation is saying tells me that the input circuits are toast. Time for a new ECC.

Does anyone know if the ECC bypasses sensor inputs for the first few seconds after startup, and then starts looking at them? Because the thing sure starts up and runs smooth for a few seconds then like a switch blurble blurble.....

 

Thanks Josh. I will do these things today and see how it works.

FWIW, I wasn't trying to be a dick. I though it was just funny, my warped sense of humor I guess. Sorry all!

 

Hope you get a hug real soon.

 

It WAS 11. I took apart the harness and traced every wire that related to the engine management. I found a few wires that the other dude had chopped up and not really dealt with properly. I stripped out the rest of what was not being used and tidied the rest up and rebuilt the looms. And it fired right up and runs strong.

FWIW, the harness is NOT back to the way it came from the factory, and the vacuum lines aren't exactly all there either. It ran just fine with nothing in front of the throttle body, and runs fine now with the intake and air filter.

So in the end we have a race truck ready to race tomorrow, thanks for the help Dave and Josh. I didn't need that bottle of bleach after all.

Does anyone know if there is a short throw shift kit for that transmission?