2000 4.4 Problems Starting

[sf_mike]

So, this morning was the worst time I've had yet. Was a half hour late to work because my car wouldn't start. In any case, I tried for about 10-15 minutes, then got the toolkit and tried switching the DME relay with the headlight washer relay. The problem is still happening after switching the relays, but at least it started on the 4th or 5th try (vs. not even coming close to starting). I'm going to take a look at the fan when I get some more time this weekend.

I also took it to my indy shop last week, they ran a number of tests and didn't come up with anything. They did however, come up with a few different service bulletins. The first was 13 50 02 which is "Intake Air Boot Loose" which applies to 4.4. and 4.6 up to 7/25/02. This is located between the mass air flow sensor and throttle body. On mine there was no evidence of leakage, but they refit it because it looked "loose". The other was 12 04 01, which applies to production dates before 11/99 (not me). This bulletin applies if you have FC 164 in your DME. They went ahead and updated the DME in any case, but this didn't do anything either.

Anyone think it could be something related to MAF sensor? That seems to be another thing that has come up in a few of the other threads on other boards.

On another side note, before they reprogrammed the DME, I had Fault Code#40/Bank 1, which is cat converter insufficient conversion error. From what I understood, this error is thrown when the oxygen sensors on either side of the cat don't record a large enough change in emissions. They said my cat might be going bad, but that would be a big surprise to me because I only have 75K miles and passed emissions with flying colors less than 2 months ago. This also went away when the DME updated which was strange (indy shop had no explanation... I'm wondering if it's a software glitch, or glitch with O2 sensor) I only bring this up because I've seen similar issues posted by a few people that had the starting problem. Could just be another common problem.