My Mont spends a lot of time not being used these days and while i've considered selling it I enjoy it too much. It's a beautiful car to drive long distances, sensational on fuel etc. Never had a problem with it other than the combination switch which I replaced for $50.

The only problem I've had with it sitting has been the battery copping a bit of abuse from not being charged enough but that's easy fixed.
Today however I started it up and fired up short of a cylinder or 2, never came good either till i turned it back off, restarted fine again like there wasn't ever a problem.

Lately i've been noticing a nice loud tick coming from the engine bay but put it down to a dirty injector... even though I only ever run 95 premium fuel & regular doses of petroleum based injector cleaner. It sounds like injector 6.

It's got pretty new (10,000k) platinum/iridium tri-tipped plugs so i'm not worried about those. which leads me to belive it's an injector or coil (known to fail). the ticking makes me think it's deffinately the injector although once an injector is phuked, is phuked not intermittant. I want to get on top of this as soon as possible.

Ford just quoted me $50 to $150 (roughly?!) to diagnose on scan gear. I pretty much told them to punch it up their collective a*** as thats a ridiculous price for a 15minute job, if I charged that i would be out of business.

Now owning an AU and a BF wouldn't it be better value just to buy an OBD-II scantool ? and wheres the best place to obtain one ? How hard are they to use ?

I see, thanks Ash.
I've heard of alot of people having coil dramas but would this explain the tick ? maybe the coil itself is breaking down discharging before the plug ? i know phark all about coil on plug ignitions i'll admit lol

I can't prove which cylinder failed but the ticks deffinately coming from number 5/6. What peeved me off more was when i turned it off and it re-started fine lol stupid late model gremlins.

How would I go about getting them tested without a mate that knows how ? Not having warranty, ford is the last place I want to go. I fekin hate my local ford with an unbridled passion. would rather take it to city ford or somewhere other than Nowra.
Nowra Fraud couldn't even diagnose a blocked cat in my ea, they wanted to charge me to replace the fuel pump & regulator for an exorbitant amount of money with no garantee when it has a diagnostic port ? and I took it home and swapped cats for free

Thanks again Ash, the cars got barely more than 100,000kms which is why I'm less than impressed. Guaranteed to be the last late model Ford I ever buy.... stupid disposable new cars.
Least you know whats wrong with the 'Stang when it happens hehe

<edit - So turbo coils are the same ?>

F**k purple monkey dishwasher..... 150,000kms, they are disposable.

Least it doesn't cost you between $50-150 to figure out whats wrong with the old ones though. Fair enough I may have had my fair share of problems with the EA but none of cost me that dearly. I reckon I fixed pretty much every problem it ever had for under $100. And my old xf I wouldve been lucky to throw $100 at it apart from obvious things like rego. My old clevo fairlane I reckon I'd be lucky to have spent over $1000 all up including the cost of the car lol

Just having a whinge I guess. I've always been one to say if you can't afford to insure & maintain it you can't afford it to begin with.

I also get the occaisonal cold start on 4 cylinders. i've always believed it has something to do with the VCT getting confused every now and then. i have found that turning off and on again almost always rectifies this. if it continues, put the accelerator on the floor and crank for ten seconds, then try to start normally.
It probably happens one morning every 2 months, otherwise runs perfectly.

lol Ash yes well.... I've always had wild dreams of a 460 in pretty much anything with wheels, don't like my chances of rego though. This year will be it's first pink slip

While slightly reassuring as that is punnisher I'm ultimately still not happy and afraid of something real bad being imminent. It's just the way my luck flows lol

looking at scantools. seem to be a pretty broad range from say budget $50 jobs to over $1000 for extra frills from bpt. I'm not qualified enough to make the choice although I only want a scanner, I have no real intention of tuning just yet.

If you have a laptop these elm clones will work on the B series no problem.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/V1-4-ELM327-OBD2 ... 256186ce1a

Unfortunately for an A series there is no software I know of to work with the elm though it can be done from the comand line in windows.

that's definitely worth a try for that money. Thanks heaps foggy. I'm buying one right now.

I'll post how I go in a week or so.

Most decent mechanics have the scan tool and usually dont charge anywhere near as much as Ford do. Guess i am lucky because my neighbour owns Jax and has the tool so i can get a scan for free when i want. Just become mates with a mech who has one and hopefully they scan for free lol!!

Otherwise that laptop hardware posted above looks to be the cheapest option

standalone scanner

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/MaxiScan-MS509-O ... 2a0f317e9b

while im sure most cheap scanners will read and erase basic codes, i beleive some cars need the correct $$ scan tool to read model specific codes

Thanks guys, I guess I'll start with the cheap unit untill I figure out what i'm doing first...

that handheld unit looks pretty handy for the money to.

Just browsing through lukeysons scantool fun thread... good read.

Last edited by low_ryda on Fri Apr 15, 2011 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes you can, remove each injector wire one by one, and see which one is not firing

that could possibly prove useful if it was happening all the time. not so handy for intermittent problems. It's been fine ever since, which actually makes me more cranky, just hoping I can maybe pull a logged fault code.

If it's coil related I'll just replace the lot as they aren't far off due I guess. 119000.

I can't see our Falcons mentioned.

Will this actually work?

from what I've read yes they will. I know they aren't listed but it's still the same platform.

For under $20 sent to my door I'll let you know. It's worth a punt.