It's likely the cansiter purge valve. There is a recall for this.....

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2018/RCMN-18V735-0635.pdf

 

I will definitely call the dealer about this recall and see if it applies. But I bought the car in 2021, shouldn’t the dealer have taken care of the recall before I bought it?

 

You gotta be kidding............get the purge valve issue looked at. They wait until you are willing to pay or force them to do it.

I bought a Ford 'certified' used car, where they put it in writing that all recall and other issues are guaranteed to be already done. I had to do them all.

 

It's possible that the recall was done and the purge valve later failed. It's not terribly hard to replace; I replaced mine before the recall was issued...

Cheers, Rod

 

Brother, I have had the EXACT same issue. Let me tell you my experience with this: it's possibly not a stuck canister purge valve; you may have blockage in your fuel tank vents.

As noted, there is a recall on the EVAP purge valve, and you should get that recall work performed; it might fix your issue. Replacing this canister purge valve, which can become stuck in the open position, is SUPER EASY. Ford stealerships are generally happy enough to do this for you.

However, as noted, this ultimately wasn't my issue. I had the recall work done TWICE at two different dealerships. Replaced canister purge valve. Still threw the same P1450 code: "Unable to bleed up fuel tank vacuum".

I put off the repairs and just lived with the check-engine light, thinking that it wasn't really a big deal. In my case, everything else ran fine, so why bother?

THEN I ran out of gas on the interstate during rush hour. This was extremely dangerous and stupid. My fuel gauge was still showing 1/8th of a tank!

What had happened was that the plastic fuel tank had deformed enough to cause the fuel gauge to be off. The cause of this was actually not the specified recall work, but blockage in the vent lines running from the fuel tank to the charcoal EVAP can and, ultimately, external atmospheric air.

My fix was to get under the car, disconnect the lines running from the fuel tank to the evap system, and blow them out with about 25 psi of compressed air. Problem solved, no more CEL, no more p1450.

Further info on p1450:

This code is thrown because there is an excessive amount of vacuum in the fuel tank. This can only be cause by two things:

1. Your canister purge valve is stuck open, and the engine is constantly drawing a vacuum against the fuel tank. Ordinarily, the purge valve will close once the engine has evacuated all the gas fumes stored in the charcoal EVAP canister that all modern cars have as part of the emissions control systems.

2. Your fuel tank is somehow sealed shut, and outside atmospheric air pressure cannot get into the tank to displace what your engine is sucking out of it (either through normal fuel depletion -or- through the periodic EVAP canister purge cycles that your emissions control equipment performs to make the EPA happy).

If your fuel tank has deformed to the point where the engine is starving itself for fuel because it cannot overcome the vacuum pressure that has built up inside the fuel tank — and you therefore can't get the motor to idle properly without revving it up — this is potentially dangerous, and your fuel gauges could be off.

If I were you, I would not let the fuel tank get below about 1/4 tank from now on. I know mine is truly empty before hitting 'E', but that's only because I was unlucky enough to have run out of fuel in rush hour traffic!

 

...If your fuel tank has deformed to the point where the engine is starving itself for fuel because it cannot overcome the vacuum pressure that has built up inside the fuel tank — and you therefore can't get the motor to idle properly without revving it up — this is potentially dangerous, and your fuel gauges could be off....

This is actually part of the recall; see attachment II, Page 3 of the link above....

 

Well, I’m gonna head to the dealership tomorrow and see if they can do it for free. If not then I will replace the canister purge valve my self, I put on my cold air intake and it doesn’t look to much harder than that but if that doesn’t fix it then I’ll try what @Lash LaRue recommended and blow out the fuel lines.

 

Also I don’t know if this is relevant but I used to rarely get pops from my exhaust, and since the code appeared it’s been popping more frequently and loudly too. I’m not complaining but I can’t help but think it’s not a good sign lol.

 

Went to the Ford Dealership today, they said the part number needs to be checked. If it comes back as not eligible for the recall work, they would charge me a $160 Fee just for looking up a part number in a database :/ I’m just going to go ahead and replace the thing myself since the part is a 3rd the cost of the diag alone. Thanks for your help all!

 

HUH?? I would think it should show up when they entered the VIN when/if the recall was done. This is a safety recall, not a TSB. You might check the VIN here, although this won't show if it was completed:

Recalls Look-up by VIN (Vehicle Identification Number)

If you replace it yourself, check the part number of the old valve against the recall notice; if it's the old number, save it and turn it in for a reimbursement from Ford.

Cheers, Rod

 

Uh, if someone intentionally overfills fuel tank past the stopping point to get rid of the intentional air pocket left for emissions then they may flood the carbon canister and even push some charcoal debris into the vent line to plug it up.

Do not persist in overfilling the fuel tank is the lesson there.

 

Do not persist in overfilling the fuel tank is the lesson there.

+1 👆 -- THIS -- 👆

For whatever it's worth, I never top off my tank. But bits of charcoal in the EVAP vent lines are a prime suspect.

 

I had this problem on my 2013, the idle would jump up to about 3k rpm sitting at a stop. It died on me one day and I lost all power, luckily was able to limp into a nearby gas station. I had the car towed to a Ford dealer and we back and forth on if it was covered under the recall. I basically told the guy that it was a recalled issue, and I did not care if the part number was different. They ended up fixing the issue under the recall, however ever since it's been done my fuel tank gauge is off. According to the trip meter, I can go 160+ miles on the first quarter tank. Then it drops like a rock. I've also noticed my mpg meter is way off as well. My last fill-up stated that I was getting 31.5mpg, however, when I calculated it by hand it came out to 26.5 mpg. Sometimes it's right on, others it's way off. I've just learned to go by milage and not the fuel gauge. 300 miles and it's time for a fill-up!

 

Why are you running 93 fuel? I have a 2003 and have only run 87 (or 89 if not available) as regular is what mine calls for. Just curious...Thanks!

 

The fuel management system in our cars can sense the octane and adjusts the program accordingly. You pay more for the fuel but get more on mileage for it.

 

Ford actually makes it really difficult to get the fuel tank covered under the recall. It does amaze me that people say we are lazy working at a dealership. I only get paid for what I do so why wouldn't I do it if it was covered by warranty ? If you don't work at a dealership do make stupid comments when you obviously don't know. It's comments like that is why I don't stick around and tryt to help out.

 

P0420 is probably just a bad rear O2 sensor. Try resetting the PCM and letting the car re-learn its idle and cruise calibrations. If the code P0420 doesn't go away, just replace the rear O2 sensor. It's cheap enough on RockAuto. You just need a breaker bar and an O2 sensor socket, and probably some penetrating oil and a wrench 🔧 or two. Pretty straightforward.

 

There’s a story behind my P0420 code as it started appearing about 3-4 months before P1450 even after multiple DTC resets. One day I was installing my subs and my battery completely died to the point where everything was flickering and then after putting the key in the ignition there were no sounds or lights. So I had a friend nearby jump me, all was fine afterwards. After about 20 minutes of driving the light came on, About a month or so after I went to ford for an oil change since I couldn’t get the damn drain bolt off. They mentioned it afterwards saying it was probably because of my exhaust, however I put my exhaust on way after the code appeared (Didn’t want to listen to them anyway after they claimed the rattle my exhaust made was actually coming from my transmission :/). At this point I’m convinced it’s a bad o2 sensor and maybe the low voltage coming from the battery as it was dying killed it? So I plugged in my obd2 and checked the O2S_V reading as far as I could tell it looked normal, it was going up and down as I was on the gas (I don’t have much experience with these readings so I could be wrong). So should I replace the O2 Sensor or could it be something else? Thanks!

 

Bro. Check this out:

P0420 code and new catalyst

My 2012 Focus has 79,500 miles on it, and it has a pesky P0420 code that is not going away. I know that I have limited time as the Catalyst warranty expires in 500 miles. I took it to the dealership and had the CEL diagnosed. It turns out that the Evap Canister was full of fuel and the purge...

www.focusfanatics.com

It looks like your P0420 could be related to liquid fuel getting up into the charcoal EVAP canister itself, clogging the lines. That is, frankly, kinda weird. But -- overfilling the tank could do this. If it were mine I would just replace both O2 sensors with Motorcraft OEM since they're not terribly expensive, they're critical components for your ECU inputs, and because they do tend to fail over time on any make/model of car I've ever owned. I'm about to replace mine at 100k right now as preventative maintenance, so I really do put my money where my mouth is.

I honestly would have a hard time understanding how this could also cause a failed or contaminated catalytic converter. I would not trust this diagnosis. The honeycomb catalytic media inside the cat would only get clogged if the engine ran incredibly rich or burned an unusual amount of oil over time.

The bit that I DO think is right is that you might have somehow gotten fuel inside the charcoal canister (bolted to the underside of your rear undercarriage). This might need to be replaced. It's not especially hard to get to, and I have DIY'ed a part of this repair job myself when I crawled under there to blow out my fuel tank vent lines with 25 psi compressed air. You just need some patience with all the lines connecting to the canister.

 

Well… I have seen the DTC code for running rich/lean 2 times in the past few months. Can’t remember the exact code but It had a pretty straight forward definition in FORScan. I went ahead and tried the PCM reset and cleaned the MAF sensor then cleared DTC. I guess I might try replacing the O2 sensors first, Downstream then upstream.

Also @rschaffter old part no. Is BV61-9D289-FH, Genuine FoMoCo.

 

Sounds to me like you know what you're doing! 👍