Climbing Hill Issue

[Kamd]

ok folks so my car wen't down the other day and today after 2 days of work $144 later....the car idles smooth, rev's good until around 3k (going by ear) and then it starts to sputter and if u floor it, it dies. Nothing. Start it back up, go out the driveway, it's fine, go downhill with acceleration, fine, try and drive back uphill with almost no accel or all accel, it dies...:bs:

And here is all the lovely new things that are on it

New:
Altenator
Voltage Regulator
Valve Cover gaskets
Distibutor Cap
Rotor Button
Motorcraft Plugs
Plug Wires
Fluids
and Ait Filter

so can someone throw me something here...

[Archangel]

Welcome to my CFI nightmare... what car you have, and which model year?

[Kamd]

1985 Mercury Grand Marquis Sedan
5.0 w/ Factory AOD
215's Front - 225's Rear

[Archangel]

Yeps, a CFI bitch - the one I'm working on is an '84 Grand Marquis with a 5-liter and AOD. Have you scanned your ECM for any codes?

[Kamd]

man i didn't even know this bitch had a hook-up...i seriously am just so done with this thing. no matter it seems like how much money or work i put in it to fix one thing after another, something else breaks or is broken and i find it and have to fix it....

[gadget73]

change the fuel filter if you haven't already. Sounds like its starving for gas.


Diagnositic plug is somewhere on the driver's side fender, probably up front near the wash bottle but it might be more towards the middle.

[Archangel]

Kamd, yes she has a hook-up for the EEC-IV scanner tool, it's on the driver-side fender before the cruise control servo, so sort of towards the back of the fender. But the thing about old cars is that you will have to keep fixing them all the time, heck give them a few years and the now-new cars will be in the same position.

Thain, why fuel starving is only affected on uphills, and not on acceleration downhill?

[87gtVIC]

Gravity.

[Archangel]

At 40 psi of line pressure gravity should have a negligible effect on fuel delivery.

[87gtVIC]

How dare you discredit gravity. God only knows where you would be right now without it.

[Kamd]

ok so here comes the noob question...(please keep in mind i have built Chevrolet's and Dodge's all my life), with these having that CFI bullshit is the filter placed like it is on a Carb and at the front base or is there an inline filter hiding under the car or wat?

[gadget73]

Frame rail, passenger side just forward of the rear wheel.


Ivan: 40 psi at idle is nice, but whats it doing under load when the car is acting up? Could be a marginally weak fuel pump that only show itself under extreme loads. I've had stuff that worked fine under normal loads but acted up only with certain operating conditions. Sometimes you have to make it screw up and figure out a way to monitor various things while its happening. I've driven around with really long vacuum lines fished out the window and a vac gauge on my dash, wiring tapped various places with the multimeter on the dash, etc. it looks retarded but sometimes thats the only way to find things.

[Archangel]

Thain, that's how I knew the PCM reference voltage wasn't an issue, I had wires run into the cab and I was watching the DVM while Scott was driving. I gotta figure out a way to monitor fuel pressure while driving, but I need a hose that's several feet long and we don't have that...

I'm thinking David may be on the right track with gravity tho - gravity affects fuel inside the tank big time, so if there are lost of dirt deposits inside the tank from a batch of bad fuel they could be washed into the fuel pickup screen... or it could be like Donald's car, with one of the wires to the pump hanging semi-loose in there.