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Re: Ford auto mechanic?
I'm surprised that it was packed full enough for it to prevent the engine from idling. In my 2001 Grand Marquis I found quite a rat's nest in the air filter box during normal inspection during an oil change. My wife, who was the primary driver of it at the time had not noticed any reduction in performance (or at least not told me about it, which is very unlikely) and my rough guess is the about 75% of the filter was blocked by the insulation that was stuffed in there. Which reminds me I was in a bit of a hurry when I did the last oil change and I should go out and look at the filter. I really also need to inspect the air inlet in her current car since it has a "lifetime" filter that is a sealed box and I'm sure is rather expensive, since I doubt the aftermarket bothers with it.
Some vehicles (and the MegaSqirt which is what it sounds like James may be using) do have a strict cranking strategy that ignores many of the sensors. Some then have a transition strategy before they switch over to normal running strategy assuming the engine temp is high enough to not go into warm up enrichment mode. However from what I can tell the Ford EEC-IV and EEC-V use the MAF during cranking, as a dirty sensor is known to cause long crank times, particularly the colder it gets.
I'd say what was happening was similar to the classic dirty fuel filter problem. When the flow starts the loose stuff gets sucked (or pushed) up to the filter element causing the restriction and once the engine is shut off gravity pulls the debris back down and then it will flow enough to work until the process repeats itself.
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