Electrical Masters, Help.

Bluesc94

Registered User
First of all since this is my first official post, I've been a lurker for years. Got into the 3.8 with a 98 Mustang I owned and was looking into a SC engine swap. That Idea passed when I got a steal on a twilight blue 94 SC 5spd. But now onto business, when I bought the car it had a bad alt. I did a 3g 135amp swap; and I have had problems. CEL is lit almost constantly, occasionally (usually when it is cold outside) it will stay off for 3-5 minutes and run completely normal. I have ran it for codes, and the ones that come up are:327,137,173,412,and 538. Now I'm almost certain that my EDIS is bad, I have was seems to be a late ignition problem "occasionally" it has almost no consistency to any driving conditions, except it seems to be more common right about the time it gets up to temperature. This timing problem causes the car to lurch and jerk, this is my biggest concern. As far as I know the Hg have never been done on this car and its at 162k and I feel like if it happens much under boost it could catastrophically have a head gasket fail. I do plan on doing them(With a 3 layer MLS and a full set of ARP studs) but its a HUGE ~~~~ on these because of how everything is so tight. (I had to remove two of my spark plugs from underneath!). Ah, before I forget every once in a blue moon it will idle very rough, almost like I have a lopey cam, as well as die or try to die unless I bump the pedal lightly. Unfortunately I dont believe I am close enough to any other SC owners so I can try someone else EDIS, its quite an expensive module at over 140 new. A little tough to drop that kind of money on something that may or may not fix a problem. I apologize for the long windedness of this post but it is a hard problem to try to explain.
 
In order for someone to help, it is important to list not only the codes, but also what they mean. We don't memorize all the codes so that means in order to help you I have to go look up the codes. Try to make our job easier by doing that yourself first. If you had done that you would realize that one of your codes relates to an improper test procedure so the first thing is to learn the proper procedure for doing a valid code test.

The second thing is to clarify which code test you did that generated each code. There are two different tests and 3 different types of codes. Giving us more detailed information about the problem and diagnostic efforts will help in diagnosis and increase the chance that someone will actually take the time to answer you.

None of your codes actually point to an ignition problem directly, but your symptoms are reminiscent of a cam sensor failure. Cam sensor failures don't always generate codes but are typically random and result in very rough running/stalling/hard starting. With a failing cam sensor the engine will run perfect one time, and horrible the next so that is where I would start looking.

Of course vacuum leaks are very typical on these cars too, but the 02 sensor rich codes are not necessarily consistent with a vacuum leak issue.
 
Ok, I have had them written down from a while back. This is something I been putting off for a while, I'll run them again and add some specifics. Thanks.
 
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