Cougar

From what you say Howard I would have the shop clean the chassis ground connection at the base of the antenna. It sounds like some corrosion has taken place and the grounding bond isn't as good as it should be. The body of the car acts as the ground plane for the antenna and is a very important part of the antenna circuit so a good bond to it is necessary. The added resistance to ground allows the noise to be picked up along with reduced signal level. They will have to remove the antenna to do that and clean the base area of the antenna and the chassis. This is a pretty common trouble.

That's great Howard. Just don't replace the radio and expect the trouble to go away with the new one unless testing has verified the radio itself is bad and not the antenna. It doesn't take much of an antenna to receive FM signals and is not susceptable to the noise problems AM is.

I doubt that the radio is the problem but it might be. If you decide to go with a new one you sould check out Crutchfield.com. A great place to help you with that.

Doesn't the signal for the speedometer come from a sensor in the transmission? I think you are going to have to use the other meter to make things right.

Due to the much longer wavelength of AM signals than FM it is harder to pick them up and having a good external antenna to do that is a must. Without it, you would have zip. The problem you are having Howard sounds to me there is a bad ground connection in the antenna circuit. The symtoms you describe match the characteristics of a bad ground at least. This could be where the antenna connects to the body. It may also be where the antenna connects to the radio. I think your model may have the version of antenna that is built into the glass and would be harder to work on. As a test you could try using a piece of wire stuck into the center pin hole of the antenna connector and see what happens. Older radios used to have a tuning control for the AM antenna section. An adjustable capacitor was used to maximize the signal for a weak station on the upper end of the tuning scale. I don't think they are used anymore.

I have no idea what the signal requirements are for either systems. You may be able to adapt the old one to the new one with some sort of mod but I can't tell you what you would need to do without knowing more about the signals they generate.

Ok, you moved the plug wires. Did the engine try to fire better when you did that? Also, you didn't just move the wires to the next position, you moved them all two positions; correct? In post 23 you stated it pops through the throttle body. That is an indication of wrong timing. Is the popping occuring with the plug wires in the position you placed them in or the positions I suggested you move them to?

Did you move the plug wire positions to the opposite sides of the cap as I suggested in my earlier posts?

Sorry to hear about that Connie. The alligators are surrounding you.

You bring up a good point Emily. The radiator tubes may be clogged alright.

When you are ready to test Connie refer to post #118 and see what you find out using the procedures there. If you can give me an idea about what time you can do the testing I will try to be there also so we can finish this without much more ado. Technicians are standing by .

Moosens are you pretty close to her? If so, any chance you can give her a hand on this trouble. I think we have the trouble pinned down but I would like to do a couple more tests to prove it out.

Break the minivan again .

The senders are wired in series with each other. It sounds like one of them at least has some dirty contacts. Some folks have used Techron in the tank to help clean the contacts and got results from that. You may have to work on them if that doesn't work.

It sounds like a thermostat or waterpump problem.

When it comes to deciding if a CAT is really bad I think it is wise to look at the signals of the front and rear sensors using a scope or scanner to see what is really going on.

Rooster2 is correct. That light is tied to a thermistor in the tank and the light will only turn on when the fuel level gets low enough to expose the thermistor to the air. It then heats up slightly and the internal resistance goes down, turning on the lamp in series with the thermistor.

Not that I don't have anything else to do but; technicians are standing by.

I have read through the posts on this problem and from what I see so far it looks to me that the main coil wire that ties to the disty may be bad. The original poster stated that the small test light pulsed on and off as the engine was cranking and the light was placed between the minus side of the coil and ground. That is exactly what a working ignition is supposed to do just as Naru stated previously. Those pulses mean that the primary side of the coil is being grounded intermittently and so that should induce the high voltage to the secondary of the coil. Check to see if you get spark out of the coil wire by removing the wire that ties to the disty end. Place the end of the wire near a good ground and see if you get a spark there when you crank the engine. If not, either the coil wire is bad or the coil itself has a bad secondary. You proved the primary side was ok because you had power on both sides of the coil. Current has a path through the primary windings when the minus side of the coil gets connected to ground by the module in the disty and that is a good thing.

In order to get the nozzle off I think you would have to get at it from the back side. You would have to tear into the inside trim and that might get a bit involved. You might try disconnecting the tube at other end near the pump and let the fluid drain out. Hopefully the debris will come out with it.

I think there is two different sizes of caps and rotors available. It depends which make of disty you have. It is best to have the parts in hand when you purchase new ones to compare with.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. The regulator is internal on these alternators.

Good job Connie. Ok, you removed the large wire on the alternator and still had a low reading so the problem isn't on that wire. In your previous testing you pulled the small connector to the alternator and the reading then went high. Please check that again with the large wire to the alternator still disconnected. Also, if the next lowest scale on your meter is 200 then use that scale or what ever the next lower scale is. The resistance is still very low. If pulling the small connector makes the reading go high then that confirms that it is the bad path. The sense lead of the alternator is the trouble (the lead for the internal regulator). I know you tried 3 different alternators and had the same trouble but it seems they all have this problem. To verify that the problem is cleared by removing the small lead to the alternator we will do a current test on the next go around. On another note. You have previously stated that you didn't have this problem with the old engine and you didn't change anything really except the alternator.

With a little fairy dust and by following the test procedures in post 97 we will find out where the trouble is pretty quickly.

Well I see your point Connie and would have to agree with you that by doing that it would be very unlikely to have 3 alternators fail the same way. Darn!! I thought we had the trouble pinned down. According to my data there is only two ways that white wire goes so when you are ready set up your meter again and then pull fuse 3 in the fuse panel and see if the meter goes high then. That is the other path the wire ties to. EDIT: I did some more thinking about this since I wrote the above post and after thinking again about what you said about the meter readings and the alternator I now think we may have to look into them some more. Here is why. When you disconnected the small connector to the back side of the alternator you stated the reading went high (1.00), indicating no problem. The other part of path that goes to fuse 3, that I wanted to test, should have still been connected to the meter when you disconnected the lead to the alternator. So if the trouble was on the fused leg of the wiring the meter reading should not have gone high, it should have stayed low. That should mean the bad path is not on the fused leg. If you would Connie here is what I would like you to do. First, set your meter scale to the 2k ohm scale instead of the 2M ohm scale. This will give us a better reading to what we are looking for. Remove the red fusible link you saw the low reading on, hook up the meter the same way you had it before and verify the low reading is still there (I am assuming that all the alternator connections are in place. If not, put them back on). Then remove the large main alternator output lead, don't let it touch anything, and see if the reading goes high. Report your results to us. That is all I need you to do until you report the results. (If you need to, print out the instuctions so you will have them to refer to for the testing)