00 Windstar Rough Idle and Run, both in and out of gear
I have a 2000 Windstar that has a very rough engine at idle, running at all speeds, in gear and in neutral. It acts as if a spark plug wire has been disconnected as far as behavior. There is no trouble code that would explain it and the check engine light is NOT on. I had a Ford dealer look at it and they said everything with the engine is fine. The front wheels jerk or vibrate when it is running, both in and out of gear. The dealer's mechanic said it could be the torque converter, a transmission problem or a camshaft balancer in the engine that they said they have never seen go bad. The transmission fluid looks fine, and does not smell burnt.
bad egr or IAC-idle air control.
https://motor.onehowto.com/article/how-to-reset-your-ecu-system-12281.html Works on newer engines after storage. I chased(and paid for) all the usual problems until a friend told me about the ECU. Dealers will charge big bucks to have their "software engineers" solve the problem. Har!
Check this out: https://motor.onehowto.com/article/how-to-reset-your-ecu-system- 12281.html
What’s the answer?
There are 2 very hard to diagnose problems that may cause this. Bad motor mounts or a bad Harmonic Balancer. I actually was removing the timing chain cover to replace the timing chain but after setting top dead center on the compression stroke the alignment Mark was perfect. But When I removed the cover my timing chain sprockets were about 30 degrees off. Basically the harmonic balancer is also the crankshaft pully. The balancer has a plastic sleeve which can slip over time. When this happens the timing marks and the crankshaft position sensor dont line up. This very gradually causes the idle to deteriorate as the sleve allows it to rotate to the point that it will shake your teeth out. You can test it by removing the passenger tire and the inner fender plastic cover. From inside the wheel well you can see the timing Mark's on the pully. Use a timing light to see if the alignment mark is off the scale. There is a small pyramid standup that acts as the pointer on the timing chain cover and a timing mark on the pully/balancer that should align when a timing light is used. Finally, 2 of my motor mounts were broken which also caused shaking. But the Harmonic balancer was the main issue.
