Car Juddering badly under acceleration

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Tom B

New member
Joined
Oct 17, 2010
Messages
257
Location
St. Helens
Last night i was out in the puma, and all of a sudden it started to judder and shake irratically under acceleration, the only way to move it was to litterally rest my foot on the pedal very lightly to get it to move. As soon as a pressed the accelerator any ammount it would judder loose power and the eml flash on untill i eased off. It felt like sonething to do with the fuel/air intake or the sparkplugs. The car starts and idles fine. Problem only appears under pressing the accelerator. Any ideas what i can check/clean to help solve this or anyone have any similar problems like it? Help would be greatly appreciated!! :) x
 
Does it shake like mad if you're stationary? If not then my guess would be a CV joint that's gone. Mine shook like mad when one went on my old Puma. The 3 spider bearings had worn and the casting it went into was scored quite badly.
 
Hmm, lots of possibilities, have you checked for a vacuum leak? Air escaping?
 
I had a similar problem, like tekz said with air escaping from the throttle housing, which was causing it to stall. I also had a similar problem when my clutch pedal switch fell off, but this only affected off throttle.

(so it was juddering on and off throttle for a while, making me think it was the cv, but in fact a red herring)
 
Cheers for the suggestions guys. The car will sit fine and idle okay, when the throttle gets to about 30% it starts to shake and judder. Then the eml cones on untill i ease off. Then will drive okay aslong as im very gentle on the throttle. It has had a k and n cone on in the past but i took it back to standard about a month ago, could that have messed up my MAF?
 
k&ns are oiled filters so there is a good change the MAF is oiled up, i went stainless steel mesh in the end as there oil free
 
So first thing to do is clean the MAF with some carb cleaner, might aswell do the throttle and ICV while ur at it, takes 15 minutes. Then check for a vacuum leak. After that next easiest thing to test and replace would be the coilpack/leads and spark plugs.
 
I had this on the FRP not long back, turned out to be the intermediate shaft on my driveshaft had dried up!
 
My mechanic's just text to say it needs a new coil pack, ht leads and lower resistance spark plugs? Rekons about £110, that seem a decent price?
 
evilrob said:
My puma did exactly this when the coil pack died.
Tom B said:
My mechanic's just text to say it needs a new coil pack, ht leads and lower resistance spark plugs? Rekons about £110, that seem a decent price?
:thumbs:

That's very good - my local garage charged the best part of £200 for exactly that. I don't know about lower resistance spark plugs - whatever the standard issue Ford ones are is what went into mine.

The genuine Ford coil pack is about £120 just on its own though - you can get factor parts, but you can also get exactly the same part from exactly the same factory but without the Motorcraft logo sticker on for about £30-£40 on eBay.

Make sure you're getting the real deal - the factor ones are shit.
 
Hope you didn't drive it too much or the unburnt fuel going through the exhaust system from the misfiring will have eaten your catalytic converter.
 
Had to drive it about 10-15 miles... dont think i will have done much damage... the way it was responding with little throttle was just like a normal drive, just under any load (going up hills) it would turn into a kangaroo! haha. Suppose i cant grumble at that price then, just glad its getting sorted! :D

Cheers for your help guys! :)
 
Coil pack and HT leads have been swapped and its running like a dream :) Thanks for the help though dude's!
 

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