An expesive day

An oil flow per rev indication might be more useful. It'd cost two or three pounds more in components (so 200-300 in retail price?) and some software in the ECU.

Do you know the cause of the seizure? Is it possible the sump got holed and all oil lost? That happened to my dad once when a brick fell off a lorry in front and it went straight through the sump.

Not sure you read my post but no oil loss or water. Seems a common problem with the ecoboost 3 pot engine. Spoke with a company that does these engines all the time. They are Whitkirk motors..what happens on some is fibres come off the belt & just above crank is a oil port to the pump. With a fine strainer in it. They get clogged with the fibres & restrict oil flow. Onthis ocation it seems like it has destroyed a big end shell. Cannot verify as the engine is waiting the replacement ordered yesterday. There is a guy on YouTube doing one of these & clearly shows the fibres being pulled out of the strainer while they fit a new belt.

The car has 45.000 miles. Since we bought with 8.000 miles & just main dealer serviced. I have changed oil & filter twice. No additives just the correct oil .

Bev drives pretty steady & never screams it. The Internet is full of similar low mileage stories. Ford recommend 10 years or 150.000 miles to change.

Steve.

Andrew: 2nd paragraph of the very first post

What a xxxx by Ford. Why didn't they recall the cars and change the belts once it was known the belts were causing a problem? No, it's alright, I know the answer - similar to the Boeing MCAS disaster.

Perhaps the Ford garages pulled the sumps off at every oil change and checked and/or cleaned the gauze pre-filter.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 10/06/2023 16:44:07

I was really amazed when I read this post, in all my 40 years plus in engine design would I have even considered putting a flexible toothed belt inside the engine exposed to lubricating oil and high temperatures? I think not, even my colleagues would have choked at the suggestion.

It seems that someone in the design team has lost their way somewhat. Looking at the design of the belt run, it appears to be more suitable for a roller chain than a flexible toothed belt. Did someone decide to change the original design intent for something a few pounds cheaper?

Perhaps this is intentional built in obsolescence or they just don't care anymore.

Yes, sorry I read it that it was a possible cause but investigation was needed.

There was some discussion about this in the Alvis Register fairly recently. When you get 40 p.s.i. cold and 20 p.s.i. hot dropping to less than 10 p.s.i. at low speeds, you are apt to worry when the gauge is 0 - 100 p.s.i. Then I noticed that my R-R runs at 20 p.s.i., but the gauge is only 0 - 30, so I stopped worrying.

Hi Mike, I agree with you - more so now than ever ! BUT if you know whats going on it may save a lot of trouble. One can always fit ones self. Noel.

When I was getting paid for working the hydraulic circuits always had a differential pressure sensir/gauge across the oil filter so you knew if it was getting blocked. It's probably not possible to fit a gauge twixt strainer and pump (on the suction side) but worth investigating? It would need to be a vacuum type gauge I think.

An alert driver may be quick enough to save an engine or in Steve’s case notice a deteriorating trend as the filter became clogged with the disintegrating belt. To the trained eye a gauge could be most useful, indeed if had one fitted to the Trident I may have hunted down the faulty filter but I don’t know if the failure was a slow build up or a dramatic failure, I suspect it was a slow process so a good chance it could have avoided the blow up. The rod failures allowed the pistons to just kiss the head which explained the ticking noise. The tow home was exciting, lane 3 of the M40 overtaking everything. Two Tridents and 3 people with a short tow rope requires intense concentration, I was knackered when I got home.

Mike

Up here in the Highlands most garages refuse to work on any of the wet belt cars. A local garage won't even MOT them! They are a disaster waiting to happen!

A bit of a discalaimer here. I was not in the car when this happened & rarely drive the car. It is Bevs not mine.

So she said I heard a rattling noise & looked down at the dash. There was a red light, which was a I guess stop now job. This was a very short distance from the roundabout. As she got to the roundabout , she dipped the clutch. When she came to set off again the car did not move. She said it did stop abruptly. Now she is a lovely lady but does like her music loud when driving.

The car may have been making a noise prior to this , which I suspect it was. The engine I have purchased is from Syntiq, which used to be Motorhog. They give 30 day warantee with the engine or 3 months if you give them the old engine back.

The engine comes bare & needs all the ancillaries from our engine. Once all done & happy it is running ok, we put the old engine back on the pallet received & they come & take it away. I did try Trent salvage, another huge recycle centre that you may have heard of. But they wanted £2200 delivered.

I remember when Ford introduced this engine to there range & the boast was the block was a A4 footprint size. They said the engine internal cambelt was good for 400,000 Km. No mention of a timeframe.

The early ones used to crack the cylinder heads due to the fact , to save money they did away with an exhaust manifold & bolted the turbo straight to the head. They started to crack internaly. Bevs is the later engine. There are plenty of other issues as there are with most cars. Google any p[articular car & up pops all the problems.

The cambelt issue is not that they break, but small fibres which come off the edge of the belt causing the clogging to the oil way.

Had I not been in my 70's the engine would have come out at home & I would have repaired it. Spent most of my adult life building & rebuilding engines from mini to big block Chevrolet's. But it's not really an old codgers thing any more, hence the Son in Law's garage doing the work.

The other thing is that if you changed the oil every month there is still achance of this happening due to the gauze getting blocked. This would still be blocked with fresh oil.

If any of you guys have one of these you will know they are a delight to drive. 3 Cylinders which sounds like a V8. Not a bit like the old 3 pot Corsa that used to tickover like a cement mixer. As some of you have said . What a shame Ford did not just go the extra mile & make it more reliable. For anyone interested here is a someone doing the belt change & showing the blockage.

Edited By Steviegtr on 10/06/2023 23:03:56

A delight to drive? Not in a Focus. It has always idled like a cement mixer, and reminds me of an Essex V6; a mild surge of bottom end torque, and then asthmatic wheeziness once it gets to 4000rpm. Engine braking is virtually non-existent and it's not easy to drive smoothly. They're down to the tiny turbo and, I suspect, a heavy flywheel. I'm not basing that on just one example, and I've never met anyone else with anything good to say about them.

It's not even particularly economical - getting more than 40mpg takes a lot of effort, or driving in lane1 of the motorway.

Hi Nick. That is not the experience I have had with the little Fiesta ST line 125 ps. It actually goes like stink & very smooth too. Fuel economy is as you say around the 40. What other petrol car is better than that. It is just a shame about the failure otherwise I cannot knock the car itself.

Steve.

Ugh, I watched that video. Everyone knowing anything about engine repairs should, at least, now know not to entrust any engine repairs to that pair of amateurs. Yet another poor video of a job that should be completed properly by competent mechanics. Keep well away from M and J Automotive, is my advice.

The 1800 Zetec engined Focus it replaced did over 40mpg. So does a 25 year-old 1400 Metro/R100. Hell, I can get almost 40mpg from a tuned 2.0i Pinto in a Capri. None of those have the Ecoboom faults, and can be maintained /repaired by anyone who knows which end of the screwdriver to hit with a hammer...

I haven't watched this yet, but here's another tear down VIDEO of the things.

Looks like Steve is getting what used to be called a 'Short' engine albeit not rebuilt with a mileage already built in. Hope it's had a good flush out and the belts replaced?

The trust we built up with the local small garage to do routine maintenance has been nullified by Manufacturers get out clauses allowing main agents to rip us off at every opportunity.

Fords technical department reps visited our company once to give us a talk on FMA. (Failure Mode Analysis). Example they showed was what was likely to happen if the pin, which operated in the scroll of a steering assembly, welded to the operating quadrant came off due to bad welding. DOH!

Seems like their own designers haven't pulled that one out of the filing cabinet.

Regards Ian.

I Do Cars on YouTube has just done a tear down of a 1.0 Ecoboom with a belt failure.

I've just watched the "I do cars" video referred to by a couple of people above. In the comments someone mentions that apparently there is a special oil that you are supposed to use that does not degrade the belts. So that might be worth looking in to. Apparently in the states you can't get that oil so even the dealers are using the wrong stuff.

There was also a comment about an aftermarket conversion of both belts (Timing and oil pump/balance) to chain, which would seem like a good idea, although tossing the whole thing and getting something Japanese would seem like a better one to me.

The "I do cars" videos are fascinating if you want to see what various forms of neglect can do to an engine, often big American iron, but German and Japanese engines do feature from time to time.

John

It's highly likely the designers of these engines are native German speakers. They have all the hallmarks of German engineering; complication for the sake of it, fussy maintenance requirements that cannot be missed, any improvements are theoretical rather than practical, horrible to work on, over optimistic use of materials(like the plastic water feed to the turbo) etc etc.