In reply to slowbird :
What's her issue? You know besides being a Ford? Sorry couldn't resist.
In reply to slowbird :
What's her issue? You know besides being a Ford? Sorry couldn't resist.
In reply to Stampie :
At least they circled the problem for him!
I was at a light, light turned green, I let out the clutch and tried to accelerate and it just died. I thought I just stalled it at first, tried starting it back up and it just cranked and cranked. Like it's not getting any fuel. Waited a while, tried some more, waited, tried, never gave any indication that it wanted to fire up.
In reply to Stampie :
I swore I'd never buy a Ford, 90 Taurus wagon was first car I wrenched on, then a windstar, And keeping my FIL exploder on the road. And I went out and bought a ZX2...
anyways cool car, that era probe was first car I went over 100 in!
In reply to Subscriber-unavailabile :
I technically have the same number of Fords as GMs. Only 33% of the GMs run right now but 100% of the Fords don't run.
In reply to slowbird :
Have a chance to check it out yet? Hard die with no stubble I'm thinking spark. If it kinda slowly died I'd think fuel.
Out of gas
Distributor
Timing Belt
Those cars had lots of trouble with ignition components back in the day. The early ones 93-95 could be converted to run on a GM HEI module if I remember correctly. The later 96-97 cars used different parts. Check to see if you have spark.
Also, my 96' loved to not start and inopportune times. I would pop the hood unplug the crank position sensor, plug it back in, and it would start. Every time.
Does this era Ford product have the fuel pump switch the gets tripped in an accident or when you fart wrong?
I've seen a few of them that were tripped at a stop light for no reason whatsoever causing the car to die.
Haven't looked at it yet. Could be spark. Not out of gas.
1997 has the newer ignition system so should be bulletproof. i'm going with timing belt.
I lost the timing belt on mine starting the car in my driveway, luckily it didn't cause any damage. Pull back the upper corner of the timing belt cover and have someone crank the car over for you.
slowbird said:Haven't looked at it yet. Could be spark. Not out of gas.
My beard is getting greyer by the day while I wait for an update.
Survey says: distributor! Bonus points to everyone who got it right.
I had a shop fix it because I don't know how to troubleshoot things and I needed it fixed fast. Sucks, but at least it's running again.
Oh and somehow the tach doesn't work anymore.
In reply to slowbird :
Most tach signals come from the distributor. Maybe a loose wire they forgot?
In reply to Stampie :
Seems like a good place to start. I'll dig out the service manual and see if I can figure out how it connects.
tach signal comes from the 3 pin connector on the disty
It does suck when your daily goes down, but at least its running again.
I'm waiting for money to accumulate for tires, so I have to watch everybody else fix / improve stuff. It does let me catch up on threads though. I had forgotten yours died.
So, did you figure out why no tach?
I looked at it for about...10 seconds yesterday. The thing that plugs into the distributor wasn't loose. Then it snowed all day and rained today and I don't feel well.
I'll check to see if the pins on the connector are berkeleyed up or if a wire is bad or something. I'm gonna use it as an excuse to get good at judging RPM by ear in the meantime.
slowbird said:I looked at it for about...10 seconds yesterday. The thing that plugs into the distributor wasn't loose. Then it snowed all day and rained today and I don't feel well.
I'll check to see if the pins on the connector are berkeleyed up or if a wire is bad or something. I'm gonna use it as an excuse to get good at judging RPM by ear in the meantime.
Or maybe you could put one of those big tachs right on top of the dash, right in front of your face! Get the one thats like 6 inches in diameter! 
Kidding, don't do that!
In reply to Bent-Valve :
Hood-mounted tach is the logical conclusion of this saga.
Bump.
Haven't looked at the tach, I just got used to driving without it.
I bought brake pads to put on but haven't put them on yet because I'm lazy.
I need to fix my Focus so that I can use the garage for other stuff but alternators are expensive.
I think I need to check the motor mounts on this thing but I don't know how.
I should just pull the engine and put it in the LX-E but then I wouldn't know what to do with the rest of the Probe except swap the 1.8 into it and that seems hard. Also I don't have an engine hoist.
I need to make friends with a wealthy garage owner who will let me work on my stuff on their lift after hours.
Wow I'm lazy. I haven't fixed anything with this thing yet, and now two tires are flat.
Good news, I think I figured out what the rattling noise is. Bad news, I think it's the timing belt tensioner, because they're notorious on this engine. I don't feel confident that I could replace it myself. I long since gave up on a return Challenge appearance for this car, so I can just pay to have someone else fix it. But not right now, because I keep buying toy trains instead.
Despite all this, I bought foglights for it instead. Why? I'm a fool.
OEM foglight assemblies are difficult to find and not cheap when you do find them. But good news! The Chevy S10 used the same type of bulbs, so I bought foglights for one of those instead.
They even came with working bulbs!
Now I'll have to figure out some kind of custom bracket to mount them. And maybe park some other way so I'm not laying in the grass to work in this area.
Oh right, I need to fix the right headlight too. It finally quit popping up.
In reply to slowbird :
You can do the TB tensioner if your arms and hands are not huge. It's a pretty tight work space.
This thing has been languishing since last fall with two flat tires. I needed to move it, so I threw on some spare wheels with air-filled tires. Well first, I had to get the wheels off because corrosion stuck them in place. That was a struggle, but I finally succeeded. Then I pushed it out of the garage and then realized the window was down the battery was dead and it looked like rain today. Whoops.
Well, these wheels weren't originally meant to be for this car, but they look pretty good on there.
The battery charger is not seeming to want to charge the dead battery, but at least I got enough juice in it to put the window up.
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