[ladenblowfish]

My 97 Taurus 3.0 OHV acts like it runs out of gas after a few miles being driven. The car starts to skip and buck but if you let off the gas and ease back on it, its ok for a while. It will get bad enough to where it car slows to below 20 mph and if you press on the gas, it won't pull at all. It will throw misfire codes all together for either cylinders 4,5 and 6 or cylinders 1,2 and 3. Never a single cylinder at a time. When it starts to skip very badly, if you shut the car off and restart it will run fine. The longer you leave the car off, the further you can drive until it starts to skip again. It cranks fine whether cold or hot and it never stalls. I've replaced the fuel filter, spark plugs, cleaned the maf and replaced the coil pack. Problem still persists. I haven't checked the fuel pressure yet though. Sometimes I can drive 20 miles or 150 miles before it starts to buck and skip. Need help ASAP! Thanks

 

[ladenblowfish]

Fuel pump fixed it. Dropped the tank and found both strainers almost completely clogged w/ a rusty, muddy sludge. Runs perfect now.

 

[fdogg96]

You could also do fuel injection cleaning using Sea Foam to help unclog it. And using the wrong spark plugs; i.e. Bosch, can misfire.

 

[ladenblowfish]

Before I changed the fuel pump, I went through 4 cans of seafoam. 2 through the intake and 2 in the gas tank w/ 2 tanks of gas. It didn't help at all. We've only had the car for a couple weeks so I decided to change the spark plugs and found the electrode on all the plugs was almost burnt off. The gap was so far apart, it measure more than my gauge would read. But all is well now. Did a complete tune up along w/ the pump so it should run great for many more miles.