Hey, friends.
It's Len from 1A Auto.
Today we have another top problems video for you.
This one's gonna be on a gen-3 Ford Expedition.
That's basically your ranges from '07 to 2017.
Let's get started.
The first thing we're gonna talk about on this is the mass air flow sensor.
If you were to look right along your air filter/air inlet, you're gonna be able to find the sensing
unit right here.
Essentially what the mass air flow sensor is supposed to do is measure the amount of
air that's getting drawn into the vehicle so the computer knows exactly how much fuel
to mix with it for proper engine combustion.
If for some reason the mass air flow sensor can't do its job properly, whether it's damaged
internally with the electrical components or even dirty for some reason, it's not gonna
be able to function properly and you're gonna notice poor fuel economy.
Other things you might happen to notice might be something such as a rough idle.
You're just sitting there parked somewhere and you can feel your engine kind of stumbling
around.
Maybe you happen to try to take off from a stop sign and you have a little bit of a hesitation
when you step on that accelerator pedal, obviously that might feel like it's gonna be an issue.
Something else you're probably gonna notice is a check engine light come on on your dash.
So I have a mass air flow sensor in my hand, and no it's not the one for the vehicle, but
it is one that I have in my hand that I can show you.
Inside this area right here is where the electrical components are gonna be and if moisture makes
its way inside there, there's gonna be an issue.
Another thing that might happen is you might happen to notice there's corrosion coming
around this area.
That's also gonna be the area where the electrical pigtail connects in.
If you find that there's corrosion here, there's more than likely corrosion on that electrical
wiring as well.
If for some reason, when you removed your mass air flow sensor and you notice that this
little sensing unit right there is dark black or it has any accumulation on it, you know
that it's very dirty.
A good idea would be if it was dirty would be to try to clean it down.
But when you do clean it, don't clean it in this direction.
Have it facing down like this so the circuit board is up higher than the area that you're
cleaning.
And, of course, you wanna make sure that you use mass air flow sensor cleaner specifically.
Don't use just a regular basic cleaner or anything like that because you could potentially
put harmful contaminants on it and then the sensing unit isn't gonna work.
Other causes that might make you think that you have a mass air flow sensor issue could
be something as basic as your air filter itself.
If for some reason you haven't been keeping up with the maintenance on your air filter
and it's very dirty inside and/or clogged, you might notice that you have an issue coming
up saying that there's a mass airflow issue when really it's just the fact that your air
filter's clogged.
Something else that might happen is maybe it's not latched down completely.
So if this is just kind of able to wobble around...
I got one more lock.
There we are.
If this can move around, there's a possibility that you're gonna be having drawn air getting
pulled through and, of course, it's gonna be dirty.
That's gonna clog up your mass air flow sensor.
But we're not just gonna stop there.
Something else to think about is you have clamps that come onto the air ducts that lead
down to your engine.
If any of these were loose like maybe you service this right here and for some reason
you loosen your clamps so you could take this right off, you didn't re-tighten it, well,
now you created an issue where you're gonna have unmetered and dirty air getting drawn
into the engine and it's not getting metered by the mass air flow sensor the way that it
should be.
So the mass air flow sensor's gonna think that there's only X amount of air getting
drawn in when the engine's saying,"I've got a lot more air coming in than you're telling
me I do."
So if you find that we're having an issue with the mass air flow sensor, a couple of
things that I would try first would be, of course, to make sure that the housing is secure.
If this can wobble around, it's gonna be an issue.
Double-check those clamps.
Once again, if the clamps are loose and this can do this, you're gonna also have an issue.
Go ahead and grab onto the wiring for that mass air flow sensor and take a peek.
If you see any funny colors, well, I don't really need to say it again.
But moving along, take a look that mass air flow sensor and the little sensing unit right
there, if you find that that's dirty in any way, like I said, go ahead and clean it down.
Put it all back together, make sure everything's nice and tight.
If you had a check engine light code, go ahead and clear it.
Take it for a road test, wait for the monitors to reset real quick.
If the code comes back, well, then just go ahead and replace your mass air flow sensor.
Now, our second problem is kind of a twofer.
It involves the EGR valve sensor and the EGR valve itself.
Just a quick heads up, not all models are gonna have an EGR that you have to worry about.
EGR essentially stands for exhaust gas recirculation.
If the EGR valve sensor isn't functioning properly, it's not gonna be able to tell the
EGR valve when to function the way that it should.
Essentially your EGR valve needs to be able to open and close at the perfect times for
optimal engine performance.
And as far as the EGR valve itself, a lot of times what happens is there'll be black
sooty stuff inside there which is carbon buildup, which is coming from the exhaust.
If there's too much buildup inside that valve, the valve won't be able to open and close
as it should.
Essentially it needs to be able to open when the sensor says to open a little bit more
or close a little bit when the sensor says to close.
If your EGR valve is stuck in the close position that essentially means that it's stuck shut.
With it being stuck shut, it's gonna have a buildup of nitrous oxide gas inside the
cylinder so then, in turn, that's gonna lead to some ticking and maybe even some engine
knocking over time.
If the EGR valve's stuck open, more than likely what you're gonna find is rough idling and
even problems with acceleration.
You might also notice that your engine stalls often and that's due to the EGR valve being
stuck open.
The reason for that is because with the valve being stuck open, it's allowing exhaust fumes
to get drawn back into that combustion chamber and, of course, that's mixing with the air
and the fuel, and it's gonna cause an improper engine combustion inside.
So now for fixes.
Of course, you're gonna wanna try to pull codes for that check engine light, assuming
you have one.
After you've done that, if you happen to find that there's an issue with the EGR valve,
what you wanna do is actually remove it from the vehicle and try to clean it out.
Inside there, what you're probably gonna notice is there's a lot of blacks to it, and that's
carbon buildup.
If after you clean out the EGR valve and of course you clean out all the hoses that lead
to and from it and you still have a runnability issue, I would go ahead and replace that EGR
valve sensor.
Now, the third problem that I wanna talk to you about on these vehicles involves the spark
plugs, and that's on the 5.4-liter, 3-valve engines.
Now, the issue that they found with the two-valve engines which made a move on to the three-valve
was that the spark plugs just didn't stay into the engines.
I'm sure you've heard about it.
People have been driving down the road, they start all of a sudden hearing a little [vocalization]
coming out from underneath their hood.
So obviously Ford had to do something about that.
They took their spark plug that looked a lot like this one...not exactly like this one,
but we'll call it about the same.
And then they ended up putting on a big old shank down on the bottom that came down to
about this length.
Now, with the longer sleeve on the spark plug, it went a little bit further down into that
head, and in between the engine and the sleeve, generally, they'd get a lot of carbon buildup
and even sometimes some rust.
So when it comes time for replacement, what you do is you'd, of course, try to put your
socket on here, give it a nice little twist to break it free.
Well, yeah, some of it would break free, probably to about this point, but then the rest of
the sleeve will get stuck inside the engine due to that carbon and/or rust.
But you wouldn't really notice that any of this is gonna be an issue until it comes time
to do those spark plugs.
So now we're gonna talk about fixes for this.
One of the first things I would wanna do is run an internal engine cleaner in there, something
that's gonna be able to break down that carbon that's gonna be located up around the spark
plug area.
Something else that I would recommend when you're replacing the spark plugs is to actually
do this when the engine's at operating temperature.
I know it doesn't make any sense to work on an engine when it's hot, especially if you're
leaning over it, but it's actually gonna be very helpful for you along the way to replace
these spark plugs.
The next thing that I would wanna go ahead and do is to go ahead and remove those ignition
coils and I would spray compressed air inside of the tubes right there where the spark plugs
are gonna be located.
That's gonna help get any debris or whatnot that's inside the tubes out before we continue.
You would wanna do that with any time you're replacing spark plugs, honestly.
Something else that I like to do is go ahead and spray a tiny bit of penetrant inside there
and we're gonna let it sit and do its job.
That's gonna help you out along the way.
Lastly, you wanna use a specialized spark plug socket for it.
You don't wanna just use one of those little spark plug sockets because what can happen
is it's gonna be able to wobble around, especially where these tubes are actually pretty long
to get down to the spark plug.
That's gonna help you kind of avoid breaking the spark plugs off inside the cylinder as
I noted before.
And if you did happen to break one of the spark plugs off inside of the head, well,
you'd wanna go ahead and get yourself one of these right here.
This is a nice toolset that's gonna make it easier for you to get the spark plug out of
the head.
Now, the fourth problem that I wanna talk about on this vehicle is corrosion.
It happens on a lot of aluminum body panels and it's super common on Fords, especially
in this year range.
If you were to look, you might see something that looks a lot like this.
It's gonna be gray with a lot of white flaking underneath there.
It's gonna be lifting up on the paint.
It might not be this bad in some places, you might just see some bubbling, but once you
see the bubbling, you'll know underneath that is this right here.
A lot of times what the symptoms for this, it might start off kind of small, like I said,
with just a little bit of bubbling underneath your paint.
You're gonna try to figure out what's going on.
Maybe you pick out a little bit and then you're gonna start seeing this right here.
A little bit of white stuff underneath there, that's corrosion.
Another symptom that you might happen to find is that the corrosion just keeps on growing
over time.
If you don't happen to take care of that one little spot that started off, it's gonna continue
growing.
You're gonna essentially find this on any body panel that's made out of aluminum.
And on this particular vehicle, you have your tailgate and you also have your hood that's
gonna be made out of aluminum.
Now, the causes of this corrosion essentially stems from iron contamination on the aluminum
prior to it actually being coated and painted at the manufacturer.
Another reason why you might find corrosion on your aluminum body panels is due to the
fact that maybe it lost some of its protective coating and so the aluminum is exposed.
Or maybe you ended up mounting something to it such as something steel or metal, maybe
putting a screw or a bolt through it.
Any part that's contacting with that aluminum that's made out of something else that's a
different type of metal, you have a probability of making some corrosion.
Now, corrosion on your aluminum body panels isn't something that's gonna be a structural
problem.
It's not a safety issue in any way.
Basically it just comes down to, if you don't think that you like the way it looks, you're
gonna need to take care of it.
Either you can take care of it on your own, which is the way that I would wanna do it.
Maybe sand it down a little bit, clean it, and then, of course, resurface it with a nice
paint that matches with what you've got going on already, or you could take it to a body
shop and pay them a little bit of money and they'll take care of it for you.
All right.
So I wanted to sit down for a couple of minutes, so I figured I'd get inside the vehicle.
For the fifth problem, what we're gonna talk about on this is the blower motor resistor.
Essentially, a way that you can tell if you have a blower motor resistor issue is if your
vehicle's key is in the On position and you take your little selector right here.
If you were to go one, two, three and you don't hear any noise, but then you push it
on four and you can hear that blower motor running the way that it should, well, then
you know that you probably have an issue with that blower motor resistor.
It needs to be able to function on all speeds.
The most common time for the blower motor resistor to not work would be in the first
three stages of the blower motor.
So essentially one, two, and three, you might notice nothing's coming out of any of your
vents.
And then, of course, once you got to the high, that's when it would start pumping out air
for you.
That essentially means that the resistor isn't doing its job anymore and it can't control
the speed of the blower motor the way that it should.
So causes why your blower motor resister might go bad, there's typically a couple different
things.
Essentially, if your blower motor goes bad and it causes too much heat inside the system
that leads to the resistor, well, of course, that's gonna melt down the wiring and the
connectors and you're gonna have an issue.
Other times what you might happen to find is there might be corrosion on any of the
wiring connectors.
If there's corrosion, that's gonna cause restriction and you're not gonna have your blower motor
functioning the way that it should.
Otherwise, you might not notice anything's wrong with it until you actually pull it out
of the heater core box and then what you might happen to notice is on the little springs
that are on there, they might be rusted or covered in debris of some sort and that's
essentially due to moisture getting inside of the area itself.
So now we should probably talk about a couple of fixes for this.
If it was me personally and I found that I had an issue with my blower motor resistor,
I would replace the blower motor at the same time.
Like I said before, if you have an issue with the blower motor, it could actually potentially
cause an issue with the resistor.
So if you just replaced the resistor and not the blower motor, well, you might be replacing
that resistor twice.
A reason why somebody might actually just replace the resistor is probably due to financial
constraints, or maybe they just figured, "Well, the blower motor's probably fine because it
works on high."
You might also notice with the resistor that there's corrosion.
If that's the issue, you'd wanna check out that pigtail.
It might need to be cleaned and it might need to be replaced also.
So basically, essentially, what it comes down to, replace the resistor, replace the blower
motor if you've got the money and, of course, check the wiring to make sure that it's not
burnt in any way and it's not corroded in any way.
Anything that's either burnt, heated up to the point that it looks like it's melted or
anything like that, or corroded is gonna need to be replaced.
Okay, friends.
So that's all the top problems I have for you on this particular vehicle.
In all honesty, I kind of had a hard time finding just those.
So with that said, this is a pretty nice vehicle to have.
Hopefully, you like the video and hopefully, you all learned a little something.
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