I have a 99 trooper 3.5l that I drove through deep water two days ago. She made it through alright but then on my way home noticed that she was running very rough and had dramatic power loss. I immediately parked it thinking that I might be at risk of hydro-locking the motor and it sat overnight. I pulled all the spark plugs and cranked the motor to blow out anything that might be in the cylinders and nothing came out, plugs looked fine, I cleaned my MAF and that seemed ok. Is it possible that my 02 sensors were damaged causing the fuel air mixture to be off? Water did come into the car but not enough to pool (has since been shopvac'd) The thing that has been throwing me is that as you drive the car will hesitate and sputter but at full throttle she runs like a champ. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

I also checked for compression and fuel pressure and those read fine.

 

Check for the compression and fuel pressure

 

yeah i did that, i just bought new o2 sensors because those needed to be changed anyway and ill change those in the morning. I'm also going to let it sit for a few ore days to try to dry it out. Ill let you guys know if i find anything.

 

Hi, I have a 99 trooper with 150k miles. With a similar problem. It was running great til now...despite the high oil consumption (half a quarter every ~500miles). Since a few months ago, after a long trip (LA to SF) it seems to loose power by seconds. Sometimes it even turns of when idling due to this power loss.

I can imagine is something electrical...the spark plugs are new, maybe the wires, distributor or coils. I just learned that the coils are independent for each spark plug! and saw them online for $110 EACH!!

My question is....How can I know which coil is bad if any? or if the distributor is the bad one?

Thanks!

 

Take out one ignition coil at a time and the spark plug for that coil. Reattach the plug to the coil but don't install the plug into the engine. Ground the threads of the spark plug to the block or mounting screw and have a friend attempt to start the engine. If you see a spark then you know that that ignition coil is good. I pulled out the fuel pump fuse to keep the engine from actually starting.

 

What ended up happening with the trooper is that the EGR failed, and the bearings of the alternator wore out underwater. The grease in between the bearings washed out. That was the cause for the metallic sound coming from the engine. It pulled a few codes- one was the egr pintle crank error and Apparently my VSS was damaged. I had the tranny rebuilt a few months ago and apparently they reinstalled the VSS poorly and water damaged it. I cleaned the EGR passages, replaced the VSS and the EGR...had the alternator rebuilt and boom! She is as good as new.

 

Good to know how you solved the issue CW.

I replaced the EGR and PCV valves and cleaned the passages, that fixed the problem.

I now have other issues:

1) 1 quart of oil per 500 miles......I will try CB-2 oil detergent as several folks reported good results.

2) my 4x4 transfer case (mechanic trans.) pop-out when I engage the 4L. It also has trouble disengaging it back to 2WD. The 4L seems to work fine. Not sure what to do here. Mechanic has adviced opening the case and looking inside......I am not sure about that yet.

Any advice is appreciated!