xceptional

I checked each coil one by one. Could not see any whiteish residue or melted plastic anywhere on any of them so I put it down to just faulty coil. Don't know which one was faulty and haven't go the time or inclination to swap each of them out to determine the bugger. When I put them in I wrapped the heads with quality electrical tape to try and add some resistance to any arcing that may occur. None of the tape was damaged or disfigured either which really confirmed that it must have been one faulty coil. Thanks for you input MA77Y. Cheers

Good news. I changed the coils last night. This morning not a miss-fire, no short, no static in the audio system, no engine rough idle or missing under load. All good. Happy Thanks for all your help. Till next time. Cheers

Well, nothing has changed since the engine earths where checked (ones I could find - see above post) and the throttle body clamp tightened. In fact it was probably worse this morning as it was both cold and wet. Unfortunately the next thing to do is the coils unless any has any other ideas. Cheers

I checked the engine earths... well at least the ones I could see attached to the engine bay. I could find only three. One attached to the ECU mount, one just behind the left headlight under the air filter box and the other behind the right headlight under the battery. None of them look substantial. The ones behind the left headlight looks like headlight earth and the one behind the right headlight disappears into a loom that appears to go to the fuse box. I could not see anything else (mind you it was in the garage using a torch) but nothing appeared to come away from the motor down low and attach to the engine bay. Anyway they were all tight however I sprayed some WD40 on them to ensure there was no moisture present. The battery terminals were securely terminated. I thought I would check over the motor for some obvious lose items and found that the clamp fastening the cross-over pipe to the throttle body was very lose. The clamp could be freely twisted around the the hose. I have read of others experiencing less than satisfactory engine performance due to incorrect air/fuel mixture caused by lose plumbing. I'll see if that made a difference when I first stat the car tomorrow however I'll need some pointing in the right direction for engine earthing strap locations to complete a comprehensive check thanks guys. Cheers

ebxmple. What do you mean type A missifire and does it take to munt the cat over a period of time. The missing only occurred late Thur arvo. Hope it hasn't damaged anything during this time, but how would you know. Cheers

Good point about the grounding. Haven't thought of that. Now, how many earthing straps are where are they located? My initial thought was the coils and or plugs as the electrical interference in the radio would suggest electrical. However I changed both at the same time in Nov 2008 (about 20,000ks ago) trying to fix the first problem I was having mentioned above, which did not fix the issue therefore the coils I took out are all still good. I have heard of the coils shorting on the covers too. To help prevent this I wrapped each coil head with electrical tape to provide further resistance against shorting. The plugs I took out are pretty munted so will discard those. I replaced the inline filter and the in tank filter around the same time I did the coils and plugs. The other possible cause could be a bad batch of fuel but weir why sometimes it's good and sometimes (especially when cold or under load) it isn't. Anyway if you tell me where to find those earthing straps etc it would be helpful. Thanks senn_T Cheers

It's been a while since I was on this forum. Last time I had an issue whereby the BA XT6T would loose power under boost (running factory standard). Eventually found that it was the catalytic converter. All the honeycomb had been burnt out, rattling around and restricting the flow. Anyway since it had to be replaced I decided to go with a hi-flow cat and exhaust, injectors, monster process west intercooler, upgraded turbo attenuator and larger dump pipe, a flash and custom tune to bring the kw to 265rwkw running only 6-8 lb boost. Later a new set of valve springs and a re-tune at higher boost should see me bust over the 300rwkw. Well, that will happen soon but I have an issue that started just a day ago. It's similar to the earlier problem with no power but this time it's all over the place. I have an idea what it is but want to know if any one has had a similar experience and what they did to fix it. The other day I was driving home from work and only a couple of min into the journey (motor still relatively cold) it started missing. The engine light would flash and while I had the radio on I could here electrical interference. It sounded like small ticking or cracking or an electrical arc in the radio. Turn the radio off and the sound stopped but the motor still missed. It is most noticeable in the lower rpm, when idle or just starting out from idle (when there is some load on the motor). It's pretty smooth from about 1200 to 2800 or 3000 rpm with only an intermittent miss or crackle in the radio. After 3000 rpm the missing becomes very noticeable and the engine accelerates very roughly. The boost seems to be still there but not as strong. The motor vibrates pretty bad until I button off. Obviously I don't drive it like that any more. It's worse in the morning when cold. Motor runs very rough and lots of static through the radio. After 15 min of driving and motor is at temp the missing is only very intermittent and mostly when idle at lights then moving off, or when hitting the real boost around 3000 rpm. I took the car to the place where I had all the work done and they put a computer on it but did not come up with anything. Does anyone have any ideas? I have a couple but don't want to say until I have had some feed back so as not to skew diagnosis. Thanks in advance. Cheers

Appreciate all the advise so far guys. It's been helpful to decide whether I am heading in the right direction and bang for buck. Is there much to increasing the line pressure in the tranny? What bout gear shift timings, are they pretty much set at the same RPM or speed? Would anyone recommend doing these with a synthetic ATF change to help preserve the tranny? Cheers

Confirmed what they were going to do. They were going to install a larger dump pipe with flap, port and actuator to handle the extra flow. They said this will be about $1,100. Does that sound right? Cheers

I will have to confirm the injectors and actuator. I was in the middle of doing something else and was not 100% concentrating. But you're right blueprinturbo the dekas are $450 on ebay and actuator - not sure what spec they are quoting but will confirm today. Has anyone had issues with the stock tranny when you dump the slipper to change down to 3rd from fourth/overdrive? I have heard that the tranny does not handle the torque too well when changing to 3rd. They advise to use performance mode to change into 3rd before planting the foot, however, my bride often drives my car and she wouldn't really know when and what to do. She just dumps the peddle on the highway to pass or weave in and out of the traffic. Cheers

Thanks for the feedback ravenhard. So you have not edited the gear changes timing or increased the line pressure? I'm starting to feel a little easier with the mods not overtaking the tranny now if that's the case. Do you have an intercooler as this seems to add the wicked low end torque that dismantles the tranny pretty quickly if not tuned correctly. Cheers

Hi Over the last few months, been having performance issues with the vehicle. Has been very under-powered especially under heavy acceleration. Have replaced the coils, plugs, fuel filter, strainer on the fuel pump in the tank but nothing helped. I did notice a rattle from the CAT which indicated to me the guts have come adrift and probably causing back pressure on the turbo etc. I took the vehicle in for a dyno last week pinpoint the issue. The came back and advise that everything was pointing to the CAT. So they bored a hole in the CAT, removed the guts and closed it back up again. It seemed to have fixed the issue. Can't be certain as I was unable to take it for a spin. So while I had the opportunity I asked them for the following mods: Hi-flow CAT (larger and with about 2m of hi-flow piping after it till it splits up at the back) Flasher2 upgrade with custom tune Process West intercooler The above alone will be approx $3k which I am happy to go with. The custom tune was going to plan until they called up yesterday and said that they were not able to proceed as the wastegate actuator or something like that was peaking and could not cope with the higher flow from the turbo. Plus they said the injectors were not coping either as they were maxing out. These extras are going to be another $2k they quoted. With all these mods, I can imagine them calling me back tomorrow and advising that the valve springs and fuel pump requires upgrading too to cope with the other mods (probably another $800 at least). When does this end, I was asking myself. Should they have told me before hand that these extra mods would be require? Could they reduce the boost/tune to not require the extra mods? I didn't want to take the kw up to a point where other things may start going wrong I.e. bottom end failing, or of even more concern the auto dumping itself. I am guessing that with all the mods above (should I go through with it) I should be seeing around 300rwkw or between 370 to 390 kw at the motor showing on the dyno chart. Would you agree? If that's the case (and I have read quite widely around the forums) my stock auto tranny would be border line coping with that amount of torgue and kw or quite possibly munt it? I asked them if remaping the gear change timings with the edit would help. They said they wouldn't touch it as there have been some other places burnt by touching the gear change timings which has munted the tranny. So, from the information I have gathered, and to clarify, is the best way to reduce any tranny damage with the least cost (as I will have spend quite a sum on the other mods) to: 1. Flush and replace the current ATF with Transmax Z or Penrite ATF synthetic including filter (to help reduce overheating) 2. Increase line pressure for firmer gear changes (to reduce slippage) 3. Change the gear shift changes with edit (to improve power to the ground) Others have mentioned eliminating the S3 S4 & S5 solenoids. What does this this do and what is the cost? Still others recommend a transmission cooler, while other say flattening out the torque curve so as not to come on too hard early in the gear change. Then there are others who have virtually done nothing to the tranny running at 300rwkw or above with no issues. So the two most pressing questions are: 1. What sort of kw should I be expecting with the above mods (I.e. Hi-flow CAT with pipe, Flash with custom tune, Process West intercooler, uprated injectors, larger turbo wastegate actuator, upgraded fuel pump and valve springs) and is $5k to $6k a reasonable price for them? 2. Would the tranny survive such a dramatic increase in kw and torque and if not what's the most bang for buck solution to ensure it does? I apologise for being so verbose. There is a lot to churn over and contemplate as you can appreciate there is quite a bit of $$$ being spent and I want to ensure I get bang for buck and spent wisely. It's my drive car not for dragging or for smok'n it up. Thanks in advance for your valued expertise, experiences and opinions. Cheers

I have removed the heat shield so that's not the rattle - CAT it is.... Typhoon_freak, I live down Edens Landing area or not far from Beenleigh if you know that area better so anything in this area would be good. But I suppose I don't really care where the workshops are, as long as they are good at diagnosing/pinpointing issues, provide good advice and options, and won't stuff me around with unnecessary trial and error fixes. Blueprintturbo the vehicle is an 03 and out of warranty unfortunately with about 160k on the dial. It's feeling more like it's the throttle positioning sensor (TPS) but can't be sure. Apparently the early BA models had a larger TPS that according to a friend who used to work as a tech for Ford, should have had a recall, whereas the later BA and BF was fitted with a smaller (low profile) unit that seemed to fix a lot of the problems. I took him out the other night to a couple of industrial back streets and demonstrated the symptoms (where the engine felt like it hit the limiter and backfired around the 120k/hr mark) and he reckons a TPS but still not 100% certain either. Tonight had the whole family in the car going to the shops and while accelerating onto the motorway it struggled to reach the 140k/hr mark to change up to 4th (depressing). Before it would effortlessly breeze through the gears with a constant surge of power when in boost. How many big ones roughly would a dyno and a tune set me back? Already spent a bit as you can see trying to find the blasted problem. Very frustrated and annoyed. I miss the performance, but apart from that I love the car. Cheers

Hi Just going through the advertisers forum and did not find any XR6T tuners located in Brisbane QLD. I have been having issues with my stock XR6T and Ford have not been able to diagnose the issue after two or three visits. I'm just hoping that a specialist XR6T workshop would know exactly what the issue is fix it straight away. Symptoms: After hard acceleration under full throttle, the motor runs rough (like on a lumpy cam) for about 20 to 30 sec when cold (running for about 2 or 3 min). Again under hard acceleration, after changing into third (between 80 and 85k/hr), it sometimes dies in the ass. Sometimes it feels flat and does not pull away until about 100 or 110k/hr. Sometimes it feels the same as hitting the limiter and does not accelerate until I take the foot off and press it again. And sometimes it surges as though there is feels like fuel starvation. There is also a quite a noticeable rattle from the CAT. What I have done on my own: Replaced Coils Replaced Plugs Replaced Fuel Filter Replaced Fuel Strainer (attached to base of fuel pump in tank) Still the symptoms exists but has improved slightly. Some have suggested the TPS and or accelerator sensor. Others have suggested fuel pump, while still others the CAT and a download of the ECU to reset all the codes. Any ideas on what to do next or where to take it in Brisbane for a quick diagnosis and resolution. Cheers

Well today I replaced the coils and plugs. Took it for a drive and the symptoms still exist although they have given it some noticeable poke. I have been reading the Official BA repair manual (some 2089 pages of it) to see what it may say about the fuel pump. It virtually quoted the symptoms I have been experiencing. From the repair manual: "The fuel pump assembly is mounted inside the fuel tank within a reservoir. The reservoir maintains a pool of fuel at the pick-up point and prevents fuel starvation during hard acceleration, braking and cornering." The manual goes on to describe the fuel pump assemly: "Fuel Pump: A filter screen is mounted on the intake side of the fuel pump. The filter is part of assembly and cannot be replaced separately." However I understand the filter screen can be bought separately. This is the next thing to replace. Does anyone know where I can purchase a filter screen? Or is it worthwhile spending a little bit of $$$ and upgrading the fuel pump also to something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=220299649301 Would an upgraded fuel pump have any damaging effect on the fuel delivery system? Got to be getting close to resolving this issue. Cheers