Did you make it?

 

All the codes you mentioned (P30x) are misfire codes and the P171 and P174 are the oxygen sensor most likely going off because you have a misfire. So you have reason to believe that they are not being honest with you when they tell you you have a bad valve in the Number 4? A bad valve would cause a misfire (P304 code). A misfire could also be caused by something like oil, dirt, water in the plug socket. This can occur because of an oil leak in the valve cover gasket or a leak in the heater hoses. Leaks in the quick disconnect fittings will often leak into #4 cylinder and misfire.

My suggestion is as follows

Clean out the plug holes in all your cylinders with a round plumbers wire brush, WD40 and rags.

Install new plugs

Make sure all the plug wires are clean and add some di-electric grease to the plug connection.

Feel the quick disconnect fittings at the firewall/passanger side for water or broken plastic parts of the fittings. Replace the hoses as necessary.

Check for oil leaks at the valve cover gaskets. You might try snugging them down gently if you have leaks

Start it up and see how it runs. Drive it around for a couple of days and if it runs half decent, go for it back to NC. If you have a bad valve, it may run good enough to get you back to NC. If you have a bad valve and a blown head gasket, I would say the engine is a gonner. I trust they did a compression check to determine that you have a bad valve.

If you have a bad valve, the only way to fix it is to pull the head and this would be about a $1000 to 1500 job. My choice would be to find a good used engine and drop it in. Given that your truck is a 97, it is not worth much with a bad engine so your choices are to either sell it as is or fix it. These car dealers are really anxious to sell trucks these days and if you have a job and can sign your name, you can trade in your truck and get a new one.

 

Well I made it to Reno this afternoon and for the most part the trip was easy going. the truck didnt want to pull itself up any hill/mountain whatsoever so that made it tricky for a bit but I just took it easy on her and let her go at her own pace if even at 45 on I80 lol. I did notice that at about 3500 rpms she seems to run like a champ although will only go 116 miles on a tank a gas. My mpg's for the whole 1,081 mile trip were between 8-11 which sucked for the wallet. I also just out of curiousity would reset my codes everytime I fueled up and noticed that anything under 70 mph except for getting on the interstate at a decent acceleration pace would set them off again.

Once here my dad and I discussed it and we are now in the market for a good used engine. Was curious and it has probably been covered so forgive me but can we just drop a Windsor in there as it currently has the Romeo?

Thanks for all your help guys I really appreciate it and look forward to a long relationship with yall....specially now that I get to keep my baby

 

Im glad you made it down there with no real troubles.

 

To be on the safe side, use the PCM for the Windsor engine. Also, the programing in the PCM is different if you have an automatic or standard transmission. You might have to just take it in the the Ford dealer to program your PCM when you are finished.

 

Well to update y'all we put another Romeo engine in. Still misfiring on cylinder 4 though....so I know it wasn't a burnt valve lol. So now I have a new engine and still at square one. This is getting so frustrating.

 

Wow well that sucks. U useing ur same old engine wireing harness?

 

Oh man that is no good at all

 

Yeah same harness. It only misses below 2000 rpms and still won't climb a hill for nothing.

 

So I don't remember and I don't wanna go back and read the thread is but the truck does have 8 coil packs or does it have 2 and spark plug wires?