QuestionQUESTION: Hi Roland! Hope your Thanksgiving was great. Good here. I have new information on the Intrepid stall problem. Since I've been driving it now and putting it through different driving situations, I have discovered new things. My girlfriend drove only local roads (avg 35 MPH) and short distances and times (under 20 minutes). I drive 20 miles to work, 75% freeway, plus other longer drives. After all the cleaning of the EGR, AIS and upper intake last weekend, the car drove well without any stalls under all conditions from Monday through Wednesday. Then Thursday I was on the freeway maintaining a steady 65 MPH and it stalled out. It would not restart for about 5 minutes. Than after that, it ran but stumbled several times in the next 30 minutes of driving. It set a code 43 after the stall, which has several meanings according to the code list on AllPar.com. I am assuming it related to the "cylinder misfire" one though. On the way home that night, I had the cruise set at 60 MPH, and it again stumbled but didn't stall.
When I returned to the garage, I again removed, cleaned and examined the EGR and AIS motor and found nothing different. Since then, it has repeatedly stumbled and tried to stall, once doing so again on the freeway, which this time I recovered by downshifting into 3rd while drifting and it picked back up but again set a code 43. Further, I notice that since Wednesday, the cooling fans run all the time, even from a cold start. I mean cold, as in 30 degrees F. That is regardless of heater settings. So when I start it fresh in the morning, the engine starts and the fans come on immediately and never shut off until I turn the car off.
Any new ideas? I'm sorry to keep throwing this at you, but I am hoping that with some new information this may help you direct me to locate this issue. As I said before, I am more stubborn than the car!
Again, look forward to hearing from you, many thanks and take care.
John
ANSWER: Hi John,
Thanks for the kind remarks.
On the code 43, that indicates a less than optimum current being accepted through the primary windings of one of the three spark coils in the coil pack. It would be worth looking into the 'driver' wires for those coils and the 12v supply wire to see if you find any damage before concluding that the coil pack needs to be replaced. Dark green/orange is the 12V supply from the ASD relay, black, white, and red/yellow are the drivers from pins 19, 17 and 18 respecitively of the engine controller. You might try verifying those with an ohmmeter and then shaking the harness for a possible intermittent situation. It is possible that the next item might be causing the 43 erroneously, so you might want to hold off a bit longer before buying a new coil...
On the other symptoms: when you described the shut down and then recovery after 5 minutes that reminds me a failing cam or crank sensor as these solid-state devices begin to do that towards the end of their lives. That would be a code 54 or 11, respectively but I believe it can happen without setting a code until further weakening of the pulse signals from such sensors. So keep an eye out for either of those codes.
The fan is indicative of either a stuck closed relay (there are two fan relays in the underhood box which you could try exchanging to see if the problem seems to move from one fan to the other or not) OR is could indicate a faulty coolant temp sensor which is falsely reading the temp. It is located next to the thermostat housing and has a two-wire plug (black/light blue and tan/black). If you remove the plug and measure across its contact terminal it should read about 10,000 to 14,000 ohms when cold, and then drop resistance to l700 to 1000 ohms when the engine reaches operating temperature. Lower than that will prompt one or both fans to come on.
So give some thought to these possibilities.
Roland
PS I am neck-and-neck in the competition to be 'expert of the month' for Novemeber. If you would be so kind as to use the 'thank/rate' tab below and then find the "nomination?" and change it from 'no' to 'yes' that would be most appreciated. The vote ends this afternoon.
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QUESTION: Hi Roland! I think you guided me to the right places. I found some bare wires at the plug for the coil pack that appear to have been for an alarm system that no longer exists. Looked like an amateur installed system and tapped into the red wire, never soldered and barely taped. Also found exposed wire on white one to coil pack, insulated and taped all. Removed and cleaned contacts on all relays in box. Fired up car and ran great last night all way to work today. Note that code cleared from computer without me disconnecting battery. Maybe my unplugging coil connector did it. Either way, so far so good! Hope that did it! Thanks a million for all yoru patience and help with this. You provide extremely clear information which, being an appliance service manager by trade and a back yard mechanic by night, makes me appreciate your responses even more. Take care and have a great Christmas. Hopefully this did the trick! John
AnswerHi John,
That is excellent news, and you are welcome.
It is reassuring also to see that the code 43 was directing us toward the real cause of the problem.
And I want to thank you for giving me a 'nomination' which indeed did result in my coming out ahead by two, yesterday afternoon. It was a true struggle because the runner-up has been 'gaming' the competition by putting forth some questions to himself which then gave him an opportunity to self-nominate. There is a discrepency between the number of questions that he logged as 'answered' and the number of actual q&a texts in his 'previously answered questions" library. The only explanation I can posit is that the computer program that otherwise would put a q&a in the library rejected how he has handled those. The mamagement at Allexperts is working on a revision of the expert evaluation aspect of the site, but hasn't implemented it yet. I just couldn't let go of the competition when it appeared to be biased against those of us who take this service seriously.
Sorry to run on, but I thought you might be interested in what was going on yesterday.
Best of the upcoming holidays to you!
Roland
