Ok guys, an old acquaintance hit me up tonight asking me for help with her car. It's a first generation Ford Escape. I'm 99% sure it's a 4-cylinder.

Anyways, this is the description of the problem in her words; "my car will slightly start shaking, then my gauges will increase, drop to nothing, then go back to normal. but my car wont speed up or nothing, it just stays the same. what is this problem? my sensors?"

Off the top I thought of spark plugs going bad, but I'm no expert so that's where you guys come in. . Any ideas of what it could be? Anything that I should specifically check?

 

electrical is my guess, check the battery and see if the terminals are secured properly. Then my next guess would be a bad grounding point or bad ECM.

 

When does it happen? Idle, Tip-In, cruise, WOT
Is it intermittent or does it always happen at the same time?
Does the Tach drop all the way to 0rpm or around 500rpm and the engine feels like it's going to die.

What year is it?

Are any of the lights on the Instrument Cluster popping up? MIL, Battery Light, etc.

 

sounds like a bad ground.

 

"It does it like 5 minutes into driving and sometimes like randomly (I can be driving 30 minutes and it does it)."

How would I check for a bad ground or ECM?