Top 5 Problems Ford Crown Victoria Sedan 2nd Gen 1998-2012

Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Today I wanted to go over some of the top problems I found with this Gen 2 Ford Crown Vic. And by Gen 2, I mean between the era of 1998 through 2012.

Okay, so let's get under the hood. And the first thing I wanna talk about is the mass air flow sensor which is gonna be located right here. And what this is gonna do is it's gonna meter the amount of air that's getting drawn through your air filter. Getting right past this it's gonna say, "Wow, I'm getting a lot of air. This is great." Gonna go sucked right into the engine. At that point, it's gonna send a little message up through these wires to the brain of the vehicle and it's gonna say, "Okay, we've got this much air coming in. We need this much fuel." So that way there you can have the exact proper amount of air-fuel ratio. One of the first things I wanna get into about this mass air flow sensor is if it is no good, you might get an improper barometric reading which essentially means that your vehicle may think that you're climbing a mountain when generally speaking you're almost at sea level. So it tries adding a little bit more air or a little less air and it's just confused on what's going on.

So you could have a runnability issue where your vehicle's running either a little bit too lean or a little too rich. A few of the other things that you might notice might be something as simple as erratic idle. Maybe the idle's a little high or maybe even a little bit low which would be very common if you had an issue with the mass air flow sensor. Essentially, your vehicle doesn't know how much air is getting drawn in so it's gonna run a little weird. You might try to step on the gas and it just doesn't wanna go. Low power, right? It's very common. Another thing that you might notice is you jump in the vehicle and you try to spark it up and for some reasons it just "ruh ruh ruh" because it's trying to draw air, it's trying to add fuel and this thing just doesn't know what's going on so of course the brain of the car doesn't know what's going on either. Some of the possible causes for this could be the fact that maybe inside your mass air flow sensor you have that little metering sensor thing inside there. That could be dirty. Overall, if you run your vehicle for too long with the same air filter, it's gonna get very dirty. After a while, that dirt's gonna start pushing its way through the engine or, you know, getting sucked through the engine. It's gonna go through that little air duct, get past this little metering thing right here and it's gonna go through. It's gonna collect all that little dirt right on here. If this gets built up with too much crud, it's not gonna know what's going on. The sensor itself could just be old. And maybe it's just kinda out of its range. It doesn't really remember what's supposed to be going on. And of course it could be bad wiring. You could disconnect it and take a peek in here. If you see any funny colors or even in that little connector, you know moisture got in and it could potentially have an issue with that connection. And of course, you would wanna check the wiring that leads to that to make sure everything's copacetic with that.

Some of the possible fixes would be to try to clean it and do a reset. See if that fixes the issue. If it doesn't, unfortunately, you're more than likely gonna have to replace it in which case I would just go on 1aauto.com and check us out.

The next thing I wanna talk about is right underneath these coils. That's where your spark plugs are gonna be. They're gonna look something like this. The darn spark plugs like to work their way out of the heads and then come popping right out of there, okay. And overall, when that happens, it's gonna pull the aluminum out of the head of your engine and that's gonna make...become a major issue. You're gonna be driving down the road and maybe you hear a little bit of an exhaust leak for a little while or at least it sounds like one but basically, that's just the combustion inside the cylinder coming up through here or working its way through the threads. As it does, it keeps rattling this, turning it left, left, left, unscrewing it. By the time it gets to here, there's really not very much threads and it just pulls the threads right out of the aluminum engine. Right? Obviously, that's not great. that's a very common issue with these. You can put in brand new spark plugs if you want. You can torque them like you're supposed to and for some reason, it just happens, in which case what you would have to do is you would of course have to hone it out, you would have to re-tap it, put it in a little heli-coil that's specifically made for a spark plug and then of course you would put in your spark plug, torque it to manufacturer specifications again and then keep your fingers crossed.

So that leads us into some of the symptoms. And let's talk about those for a second. You might notice you have a rough idle. You're sitting in a parking lot with the vehicle running. You're not obviously driving. And you can feel your steering wheel shaking a little bit. You could feel your butt shaking a little bit in the seat. You're figuring out what's going on. You go pop that hood. You take a peek underneath and you see your engine doing this. Just hopping all around. It has a misfire so you need to figure that out. You might also notice when you step on the gas it just goes "bog bog bog" and it just doesn't wanna get out of its own way. Loss of power. That's very common. Especially if for some reason one of these spark plugs happen to blow right out of there, right. You're gonna hear a loud noise. It's gonna go [vocalization] right? And you're gonna hear [vocalization] coming out of that cylinder because there's no spark plug in there. You have to keep in mind if you hear that noise and you know that that spark plug came out, you need to stop driving. If you don't, your fuel injector's gonna continue pouring gasoline into that cylinder. There's gonna be no spark plug to ignite it. It's gonna fill up the cylinder. And of course it's gonna keep trying to push it out every time the piston comes up and down. It's gonna come shooting out of there, right. It's gonna come shooting out of where the spark plug's supposed to be. It's gonna dry out the inside of that cylinder where there should be oil to protect the cylinder from the piston going up and down. It's gonna dry that out so there won't be any oil in there and you're gonna really mess up your engine. Not just that. Of course, like I said, you're gonna have raw fuel that could just be getting pushed in and out of that engine. And maybe that spark plug, even though it's not in the engine, it could still make a spark if it bounces off of something that grounds it. That'll be very bad. Nobody wants any of that.

The next thing I wanna talk to you about is the IAC solenoid. What you might notice happens when that tends to go bad is generally speaking, you're gonna have a super high idle and it just doesn't wanna come down. If it's clogged or it's not working properly, that might happen. What I would do is I would just reach back there behind your air intake. You're gonna find it back there. You would unplug it. If for some reason the idle doesn't end up coming down to about 550 or even stall out the vehicle, more than likely you're gonna have to move ahead to checking that PCV system. And if you look right along your valve cover, you can see that located right here. Okay? This PCV system is very important because that's part of the positive crankcase ventilation system of the engine and if for some reason it's not functioning properly and/or it's clogged, obviously your engine's not gonna run right.

So like I said, if you check that IAC solenoid, you unplugged it and the idle didn't change from what it was normally doing, just jump ahead and check that PCV valve. If for some reason it did change, then you'd wanna of course replace that solenoid.

The next thing I wanna talk about while we're still under the hood is the intake manifold on these. They went ahead and upgraded them to something with the aluminum right here on the crossover tube that goes from one side to the other but originally, the whole intake including this crossover tube was all plastic. And generally speaking, the plastic would just leak. So they upgraded it to the aluminum. If for some reason yours is leaking up along there, you're gonna have to go ahead and replace the whole intake and then I would get the one with the upgraded aluminum and I'm sure you probably can't get the plain old plastic anymore.

There is something else to think about about these intakes while I've still got your ear. If you're replacing the intake or maybe you're looking along the back side of your engine and you happen to see that you have a coolant leak back there, I wanna show you where to look. We have this gasket right here. And this is because I just recently did this job, the intake on this. It was laying right like this. Okay? And basically, there was like a small little pinhole in the engine on the engine block there right where this sits on and it was making it so coolant, as this heats up, it was kinda seeping in there and it just kinda deteriorated and ate away. Once it ate away enough, it started seeping down along the back side of the engine there. This is very common on these vehicles. In all actuality, it's pretty common on a lot of vehicles but it is something that I wanted to mention about this particular one.

Now the last thing I wanna talk to you about on this is located inside the vehicle and it's located right down here. On the dash you're gonna see this and this is the little heater selector switch. This is gonna work for your HVAC system and it works off a vacuum which is created from the engine. As you turn this switch, you should hear an audible noise, a vacuum inside of the dash area. There it is, little hiss. Okay? If for some reason you were switching this and you didn't hear any hissing noise coming from inside the dash, more than likely you don't have any vacuum getting down to this. And that's very common to happen if you're working underneath the hood on the engine and you happen to disconnect one of those hoses. Maybe you didn't reconnect it or maybe you did reconnect it and it just really wasn't in the best condition or even you didn't even touch the darn thing and it just kinda rotted and deteriorated and fell off on its own. Could just be in poor condition. Lots of things like that.

Okay, friends. So I had a lot of fun making this video for you and I hope you enjoyed. If you did, make sure you like, you comment and you subscribe. While you're at it, ring the bell. That way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.
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