Ford E-van: Cylinder "missing" question?

[Bbasso]

Sold... bummer.
But I looked into limp/safe mode for the triton motors and it appears the ECU can be triggered.

[1der]

For the record from first hand knowledge -
Gas engines definitely can go into limp mode.

[carringb]

Triton motors have both "Fail Safe Mode" and "Limp mode".

Also, after 3 cycles of a misfire, it will disable a single cylinder.

Fail Safe Mode = excess cyinder head temps (from no coolant) and it skips every other ignition cycle, effectively becoming an air-cooled 4 or 5 cylinder.

Fail Safe mode puts you at a fast idle, and nothing more. You could limp home slowly, and that's it. Mine did this intermittently for a while when I had an incompatible Banks Ottomind chip (dealer did a firmware update, which made the chip no longer fully compatible). A restart puts things back to normal until the trigger event occurs again.

[BrianW]

Good info! Thanks! I always tuck these knowledge bits away in my brain for future troubleshooting.

[86Scotty]

What's your budget for this idea Brian? Cheap 5.4's are all over the place. I bet one could be found. 2k? 3k?

[arctictraveller]

The most likely cause was a bad coil. Twice now, I've had a coil go out with out setting a check engine light. The last time was just a couple weeks ago. There was no light, but there was a "pending code" that took me directly to cyl number 4. Fortunately, it was easy to get to, and I was back on the road in 30 minutes. The ECM monitors "cylinder contribution" and recognizes when any cylinder fails to provide the same amount of power as the others, so it could have been several other problems causing number 4 to underperform, but installing a coil is easy and almost always fixes the problem.

[BrianW]

Originally Posted by 86Scotty

What's your budget for this idea Brian? Cheap 5.4's are all over the place. I bet one could be found. 2k? 3k?

Kinda open $$ wise, although obviously don't want to break the bank. Looking at EB passenger vans, with the idea of keeping the first bench and ditching the rest in order to camperize it. Or, a conversion van with a raised roof and captain's chairs. Mainly looking for something that is decently maintained and that I can get at a decent enough price to be able to resell it without a full loss. I looked at one-way rental RVs and it's pushing 8-10,000 for the rental, so I figure a buy-and-sell van isn't too bad of an idea, even if we lose money. I'd rather do the trip in a van anyway, over a big RV.



You'd think we'd have our summer plans dialed in by now, but we're still pondering options. We were going to do the Alaska thing last year, but ended doing a lower-48 XC trip instead with our SMB. Our son (13 years old) now has visited all of the lower 48 states, so we thought that it would be fun to do the Alaska trip since I can take off 4 weeks this summer if I want. My wife and I have driven up and back to Alaska twice before (once from Philly, once from Chicago) in our "before kid" years, and lived up there for several summers, so we know what we are getting into with the drive...

[86Scotty]

Wow, awesome. It's still the last frontier for me. There and Baja. I'm afraid to do either until my kids are raised because I might not come back.

Speaking of which, don't delay. Get this trip done. My oldest is a teenager now and both have lost interest in our long summer road trips. We're too lazy to make them go so we're starting to just go ourselves. Still, they've seen everything in America, though not quite every state. Absolutely no regrets. I wish I had at their age. Kinda funny, pretty much my children's whole traveling lives are documented on this site somewhere.

[Bbasso]

^ that right there is the great thing about vans, the most under sold aspect, time with family and friends spent together over many many years.
Well said, E.