2011Transit Connect P0354

Hey all, I wanted to share a recent experience here and see what you guys think. Had a customer bring in this 11 Transit Connect for a money light. This is a work truck for an account I have. The vehicle has 37k on the clock. When it arrived the driver said that at times it would shake but only for a few seconds. So I drive it, let it run at idle, monitor data, and finally put the pico on the trigger at the coil while monitoring the power feed with a test light. Of course it never misses a beat. So...I drive it once more time and once, when I stopped at a light it misfired for all of 5 seconds. Not having the scope on here I could not get any real direction. I hook the pico back up and take it for a ride again...for an hour. Nothing. Runs like a champ. I decide to replace the coil and the connector so I would at least have piece of mind that it is new...and no I do not like changing parts. Anyway, this is a work vehicle and needs to be on the road making money, so I took an educated guess. Road tested again through the day and allowed it to idle again while monitoring the primary and current of the coil. Perfect.
Of course this isn't the end of the story. Three days later, I get the call that the light is back on. I get it back in and again scope this thing. At the coil, at the pcm connector. Load tested with a headlamp and found absolutely nothing. Now I am told the vehicle was at Ford 4 times a year ago for the same code and they never did fix it. I told the customer that being that I am certain wiring integrity is good as is the coil ad connectors and pins and suck, the only thing left is the PCM, but I have never seen one fail on this MY for this problem. He says to go for it. I install a new pcm and as it is laying there I see something in the connector. A hint of oil in the connector for the coil drivers. I pik up the old pcm which is laying on its side now and find oil coming out of the pins. I traced everything that goes to this thing and found nothing leaking oil through a sensor or connector. How in the hell this happened is beyond me, unless someone replaced the culprit before I ever worked on the truck. If anyone has ever seen this, please let me know as I would like to find out if this is a one off problem or something more common to this vehicle. There are no TSB's to be found on it.

Gutsy call, man :ohmy: NOT saying you were wrong to sell a PCM, your testing was solid, I'm just not sure I could make that phone call. Well done getting them back on the road!

I've never heard anything about oil wicking back up to the connectors on these vans, so that's a first for me. Just thinking out loud here... What if the oil came from the PCM? i.e. something got cooked inside the computer, and the oil you saw was the result. This wouldn't be the first time Ford has had driver problems in their PCM's :dry:

Thank you, Tyler. I am quite aware of the driver issues, but I am quite sure this was not something inside the pcm. It had no odor at all. Aside from that the vehicle was an intermittent problem. I can see if it misfired all the time, but...I just don't know. Nothing worse than having thousands of dollars in equipment on a vehicle, actually knowing the circuit you are testing and having the thing never act up in your presence.
Trust me when I say that was a very difficult call to make and I am not even sure it will not happen again. I have seen three other Transit Connects with this code, but all of them were a faulty coil or connector. I was hoping to see the thing act up and catch the current waveform to see if there was current when it misfired proving the driver was getting stuck on or if the thing had no current proving the driver was actually not working. I suppose with the wiring being good and coil, the pcm was faulty regardless...