[Parksie]

My 1990 Taurus has (3.0L) has been giving me commuter nightmares this past week. It is an intermittent problem that has cropped up occasionally since I bought the car in late 2000 - this week is the 3rd consistent occurrence of the glitch.

Here's the problem.. while driving, the fuel pump (sender) will quit working, causing the engine to stall. Sometimes, the sender cuts out only for a split second, and the momentum of the car restarts the engine, resulting in only a momentary hiccup. Other times, I get a complete loss of power and have to drift onto the shoulder. It might take 10 seconds to 10 minutes before the sender starts working again and I can restart the engine. There seems to be no correlation to speed, engine RPMs or the amount of fuel in the tank.

After the first occurrence of this glitch, I took the car to a mechanic, who ran tests on the sender, electrical connections and the fuel system, and was unable to find anything amiss. I have had dozens of theories on the cause of this problem, including:

* A faulty ignition module that could be preventing electrical current from reaching the sender.

* I have heard rumours that the sender in this vintage of Taurus had a known fault, which would cause this sort of episode and can only be fixed by installing a new sender

* Weather conditions? I've suspected that excessive dampness or condensation could cause the sender to short or otherwise malfunction.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has had similar experiences or might know what I can do to correct this problem. Having to drift dead stick across 4 lanes of rush-hour traffic to the shoulder is starting to get on my nerves!!!

Many thanks,

Stephen Parkin

 

[Pita]

Parksie I had a similar problem with my F250 eventually replacing every electrical component under the hood sometimes several times. I took it to a friend of mine who owns an auto repair shop to hook it up to his computer several times the only thing it said was a bad egr(BS!). The problem was eventually a 20 dollar part aka the stator. The stator is inside the distributor, so you have to pull the distributor out ,marking everything and being very careful. All the problems went away! Amen! Let me know if this helps at all. Fords forever, Steve.

 

[Rockledge]

I used to have an '89 Taurus that had intermittent stall and then a wait period before it would start again. Turned out to be the ignition module getting heated up and then cutting out.

 

[Intelliforce]

I think it's your fuel pump. This is what they do when they are on there way out. You need to hook up a fuel pressure gauge to the fuel rail and wait for it to stall.

 

[Mcgilles]

I've had a stalling problem for a while, but my car always starts right back up, although it stalls again immediately sometimes. run some fuel system cleaner through, and replace the fuel filter. the cleaner made a huge difference but it was not permanent, since I changed out the fuel filter there has been no problems. if you want to do that, one tip, go under your engine and pull the fuel pump fuse, then run the engine until it stalls. this will relieve the pressure in the fuel system so it doesn't spray all over the place when you take the filter out. good luck

 

[Guest]

Could be the fuel pump or even a really dirty fuel filter. When was the last time you changed that filter?

It could also be the Ignition Module. Easyway to check is to replace using one from a salvage yard (if you can find one) They are dirt cheap and if the used one solves the problem you know what it was and can get a new one (because who knows how long the used one would work for). Their is a class action going on right now with Ford because of the faulty ignition modules. (I got a letter in the mail regarding it).