Disregarding everything else about the Aerostar, I want to focus on why it is that it will start every single time, all the time, no matter what, in dry weather. If I drive it and then it rains upwards of a half a day later, I can drive it as soon as it starts raining. If it sits for over a day, but only if there'* rain, it absolutely will not start normally.

Now, to explain "normally." The engine just turns over a few times, and things start running every time I need to haul something. However, when it rains, the van absolutely cannot start like that. Instead, it turns over for a good 5 minutes before it starts, and then I'm out of an eighth of a gas tank.

What are some troubleshooting steps for this?

My work has about a dozen Aerostars that I have to keep running, the ONLY time I've seen them get cranky to start is wet weather is when they have extremely worn out spark plugs and wires, or I can imagine a crack in the distributer cap would also cause this condition.

As I recall those engines love Bosch Platinums, however i hope you have skinny arms and aren't afraid of getting cut up while doing that job

ours use to do that... did the plugs and wires and it ran awesome in the rain.


strech before and after doing the plugs... small girly like arms are very helpful too

These are great points! I have had a look, and I'm aware of the professionally estimated 2.5 hour work time to do the plugs. The van is a 92, RWD with a non-extended cab if that helps. I see that the blower motor is in the way of EVERYTHING, and the Rice Zone manual tells me that I need to take off the front passenger side wheel for the frontmost plug, and I have to go through the firewall from the inside for the rear two on the passenger side.

I have big, awesome arms. No way I can do those plugs without some major scraping. However, I see that the plug wires are suicidally horrible, and the distributor cap is probably not a cap anymore. Sorry. But hey, it seems to run all right during good weather, cold or hot. Thanks for confirming it'* the tuneup, and now I don't have to worry much about compression issues or gasket problems. Much. I'll have a look and let you know.