Poor Performance

[Nige F]

I have a 97 2.3 Ghia. Over the past few weeks the vehicle seems down on performance and fuel consumption is up. Over the past few days,when in traffic and the car is warm, the revs drop right down,then pick up again to normal tick over speed. This occurs when first slowing down. There is also a strong smell from the cat when this happens.

 

Any ideas please??

[Guest Andy]

Loss of power, fuel consumption gone up ,cat smelling funny, i would say the cat has gone tits up and time for a new one.

:angry: :o :o :o

[iainkirk]

Diagnosis: Your Galaxy is broken and your cat has wind or has trodden in something nasty!

 

Solution: Get your Galaxy fixed and don't let the cat get in with you...or alternatively, make it sit in row 3 and leave the side vents open! :blink:

[Ivor_E_Tower]

Don't know if 2.3 has an idle stabilisation valve but this may be the problem.

Have known other pertol cars with this fault - albeit usual symptom is high and unstable idle rather than low speed problem.

May be worth checking? Also can you get engine management checked for logged faults?

[charles]

there's something wrong with the motor management. firstly the ford garage should read out the fault codes. my guess is the mass airflow sensor which has gone, but also the oxygen sensor in the exhaust could be in error.

[Guest SA Intruder]

Agree with Andy, Cats collapsed on itself.

 

Drive much like that and engine will complain.

[Nige F]

Finally got the car checked out by the below company today. He did a great job and eventually traced the fault to a duff Lambda sensor. Apparantly they normally just fail, but not mine. It had an intermittent fault and it was only after being connected to the computer for about an hour did it show up. The fault didnot last long enough to leave a code in the ECU.

 

Trip to the local Ford dealer for the part (