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144 Posts
Na the ECM is the last place you should ever look, 9 times out of 10 the ecm is never the problem, if it ever happens to be, all kinds of funny things will happen and you will probably have multiple codes, at that point of a complete no start situation period which is very rare unless you drive the car in some deep water and the ecm gets submerged that might do some damage.
Also the 3.3 and the 3.5 have the potential to last forever but the 3.5 requires more maitnance to do so mileage is never an issue unless no maitnance has ever been done.
Sounds like you may have a leak in vacuum from your description, but I can't honestly tell, when you start the car how does it run at idle is it shaky or feel like a misfire may be there steering wheel shake a little, when you add throttle does the problem smooth itself out and seem to disapear, if so that is a classic symptom or a vacuum leak or sometimes on these 3.5's an intake gasket leak, it may not be too bad yet, but will get worse if it is one of those.
Also not a bad idea to check your spark plugs, if you are not running champions in this engine then you will be suprised how bad it will act up when you put some miles on any other brand of plug, I have brought many 3.5 engines back to life and curred all kinds of weird idling and acceleration by installing the recomended champion copper plugs, I suggest copper as you get the best spark out of copper, platinums suck unless you have a hard time getting at the plugs and rather change them less often, but the spark isn't as good and they run a few bucks more, not worth it in my opinion.
Also I recomend 89 octane as these engines were made for it and should be ran off of it all the time, I did the math when I owned mine and I was only paying 1.90 extra per tank and got better performance and gas mileage from it than the 87. So all in all I was spending more on the 87 in reality due to the drop in fuel economy.
Well report back and let me know what you find....
Also the 3.3 and the 3.5 have the potential to last forever but the 3.5 requires more maitnance to do so mileage is never an issue unless no maitnance has ever been done.
Sounds like you may have a leak in vacuum from your description, but I can't honestly tell, when you start the car how does it run at idle is it shaky or feel like a misfire may be there steering wheel shake a little, when you add throttle does the problem smooth itself out and seem to disapear, if so that is a classic symptom or a vacuum leak or sometimes on these 3.5's an intake gasket leak, it may not be too bad yet, but will get worse if it is one of those.
Also not a bad idea to check your spark plugs, if you are not running champions in this engine then you will be suprised how bad it will act up when you put some miles on any other brand of plug, I have brought many 3.5 engines back to life and curred all kinds of weird idling and acceleration by installing the recomended champion copper plugs, I suggest copper as you get the best spark out of copper, platinums suck unless you have a hard time getting at the plugs and rather change them less often, but the spark isn't as good and they run a few bucks more, not worth it in my opinion.
Also I recomend 89 octane as these engines were made for it and should be ran off of it all the time, I did the math when I owned mine and I was only paying 1.90 extra per tank and got better performance and gas mileage from it than the 87. So all in all I was spending more on the 87 in reality due to the drop in fuel economy.
Well report back and let me know what you find....