1996 ford thunderbird shifting out of park into drive there's some sort of vibration feeling and the rpm's drop (they drop to a little below the idling speed with the car in drive, then moves back to normal) and the voltage meter drops (from the center battery icon to just in front of it). but the car seems to run fine no check engine light etc; seems to do it on first startup of the day or after it's been sitting for a while. Just want to know what it is, and if it can be fixed or if it's not a problem.

Marvin

• 85242 Answers
• Posted on Sep 09, 2008

SOURCE: 2002 Ford Taurus ses 24v DOHC

Sounds like when you ran the car out of gas the fuel pump was damaged, these in tank electric fuel pumps are very small and produce allot pressure and volume, the way they do this is to use the gas around them to cool down, when the pump comes out of fuel when the tank is below 1/4 full it starts to get hot very quickly, since your pump was well used (109000 miles) that was the last straw. When you replace the pump also replace the fuel filter.
I would also clean the throttle valve and idle speed control valve, this may be contributing to the low idle complaint, clear the system after the pump and cleaning by disconnecting the battery for a few moments.

SOURCE: speedometer, tack, fuel gauge, temp gauge have erattic behavior

With Ign. off what is your batt.voltage reading than take neg. cable off and take another reading 5 min. later. It sounds like a intermitten short, try to isolate voltage drop when acting up. Gauge circuit would be a good start. Schematic would be helpful.

SOURCE: 1996 Ford Thunderbird V8 4.6L Idles High

check your throttle body make sure all the springs are connected. your throttle body may be nasty inside and may need cleaning, it may be getting stuck. Throttle cable could be sticking or disconnected (there are two one pulls and one returns to idle IIRC)

also you should really search www.tccoa.com and become a member there if you are not already.