Engine stumbles & dies on steep upgrades (Ford gas v10)

[geoffff]

Originally Posted by haywoodphotomaccom

Midway up the hill it would stop but not actually stall. All of the gauges starting bouncing all over the place and it would not move forward at all.

The gauges bouncing sounds like an electrical problem to me. This is how my van behaved when the heavy cable connecting my starter battery and my house battery got pinched by my house battery and rubbed its insulation away and eventually shorted against the van frame. When this happened to me (starting an engine fire), the gauges and engine would *suddenly* cut out, and when power came back, the gauges would do the self-test where they all sweep from zero to max and back -- just like when I do a jump start when my starter battery has run dead. It was easy to restart -- either it ran or it didn't. Perhaps something is shorting only when your van is at that particular steep angle?

When I was having my fuel canister issue, the engine would *gradually* lose power, reaching a point where it would stumble & die. When it finally died, it was difficult to restart and huge quantities of thick black smoke came out the tailpipe during the process.

Originally Posted by haywoodphotomaccom

Did you get that fix to work Geoff?

I've added 10 feet of extra tubing, looping up into my fuel filler cutout area. I'll give it a test on an overnight trip I have planned next week. If this doesn't work, I'll just add some mechanical tube-pinching so this emissions system will be disabled while I'm offroad.

Originally Posted by haywoodphotomaccom

Another thing of interest was on the way home yesterday on the freeway the AC would rotate from the top vents to the floor while going up hills. When the I reached a flat it would cycle back up the top vents.

I had a very similar problem when my van was new, but my A/C vents would change from normal vent to the *defroster* vents (under the window). The problem turned out to be a vacuum leak somewhere under the dash. After many tries, and being told this was "normal", I finally found a Ford mechanic who found & fixed this problem.

-- Geoff

[depark]

Originally Posted by geoffff

I had a very similar problem when my van was new, but my A/C vents would change from normal vent to the *defroster* vents (under the window). The problem turned out to be a vacuum leak somewhere under the dash. After many tries, and being told this was "normal", I finally found a Ford mechanic who found & fixed this problem.

-- Geoff

All these vent issues. I have the same thing happening with my vents. Its definitely a vacuum leak under the dash in my case. One thing interesting that the mechanic told me is that if the system looses vacuum then the vents automatically default to defrost. That's a safety feature. It is kind of funny that depending on the amount of vacuum available my vents switch all about. Now I just need to fix it.

Cheers
Darryl

[geoffff]

Here is the loop of extra hose I spliced into the fuel tank vent before the evaporative canister, where I sent it up into the fuel filler cutout. I later added some corrugated sheathing to protect the hose where it contacts the sheet metal. Photo is looking up into the fuel filler cutout from below.



The other extra mystery item you see there ziptied to the fuel filler pipe is my new breather for the Atlas transfer case.

-- Geoff

[Davidl13]

Geoff,

Iss your problem fixed?

[geoffff]

Yes, this does seem to be working.

After my modification I gave the van some tests on steep hills with a full gas tank, and saw no stumbling -- and then it gave me no trouble for my Baja trip back in February. I haven't done any serious testing since then.

I do see some gas seepage (wetness) around my hose-clamp connected tubing which doesn't make me happy, but it's much better than gas pouring out of my evaporative canister accompanied by engine stumbling.