fiestaturbo.com

[Stemh]

Christ you're certainly an unlucky fella aren't you! Try bashing the cat too, see if it rattles. As for the other things, we had the handbrake done, guessing they bodged that then Also with the lower arms, when I changed the front brakes I looked at them and thought they were HUGE and wouldn't like to be the one who has to change them when they expire

At the moment we're both on course to miss FITP I pulled up today with blue smoke literally POURING out my bonnet vents. Hopefully it's just the cam cover gasket that's fubar.

Ouch, that doesnt sound good! Hope its nothing serious! And yep im gonna be the lucky person changing those lower arms

Found a possible culprit to my bad emissions.. One of the crankcase breather pipes that pushes onto the PCV valve was homemade and not strong enough. So it was crushing itself under all the pressure going into it. And when it does this, obviously it blocks itself up. Its also leaking slightly. Could this affect my emissions a lot?

Also when the car is revved, it gives out a bit (only a bit) or black smoke. Guessing this is a result of it running rich?

[Tweek]

black smoke is carbon or overfuelling yes.

I just fixed mine now, cam cover gasket had sharted itself and filled my engine bay with oil. oil + heat = smoke

[Tweek]

Just told my mum about the handbrake and antiroll bar bushes failing. She went nuts cos she paid to have those done on the MOT last year It had a new handbrake cable and both rear ARB bushes.

[Stemh]

just took that ARB bush off that its failed on and i was thinking it looked fairly new! there was a bit of play in it though, but its 58p for a new one

and i think the handbrake cable just needs tightening, one of the advisories was the handbrake was nearing no reserve travel so it might have just stretched a bit.

Has your mum heard about the engine being apart 3 times

[Stemh]

Update.

Car almost ready for its retest

Coil pack was playing up the other day so bought one off ebay, arrived this morning. So its now fitted and running on all cylinders again

Also went and bought 2 new wishbones and rear ARB bushes, and got them fitted. Aligned my headlight aswell which was on the MOT fail sheet.

All thats left to do is sort the handbrake out and hope for the best for its emissions test!

Put some injector cleaner in and £15 of shell optimax stuff and a bottle of some emissions reducer stuff. Also done an oil and filter change so hopefully it will have brought them down a bit.

Just have to wait and see haha

[FiestaBen]

Hope it passes mate

[Stemh]

Well a new lambda sensor and a bottle or 2 of injector cleaner and the car has a nice new MOT Its alive for another 12 months

Car might actually make it to FITP after all!

[Sphinx]

Looks like a HELL of a lot of work had gone into that engine!

Is this Tweeks mums old car then? or am I completely lost?

[FiestaBen]

Nice one mate, sorry I didn't text ya back, to busy shouting and swearing at my leather and the lack of credit

[Stemh]

Looks like a HELL of a lot of work had gone into that engine!

Is this Tweeks mums old car then? or am I completely lost?

yup a lot of work has gone into the engine, probably too much work actually! And yeah its tweeks mums old car, had it about 4 months now


and no probs ben, thought you'd have fun fitting them seats haha

[FiestaBen]

the words "converted to mk3 astra" were b******s when it got to doing the actual backs of the rears, the bases and fronts are exactly right.... nothing the grinder wont sort.

[Tweek]

Whey! Good times

[jonyb4]

woot gotcha an mot, ill see her again at fitp then!

[Stemh]

You will! actually cant wait! first show ive been to lol

[jonyb4]

haha nice, fitp is the best to go to first

[mada01]

ste you free on friday?

wonna do a pre fitp meet and wash ahahah

[fiend]

How much lower were the emissions on the re-test, just out of interest?

[Stemh]

Adam - Erm not sure at the moment mate, at uni till about half 1 ish, maybe in afternoon? But saturday is gonna be my car cleaning day haha

Fiend - i let the mot garage have a look to see why the emissions was so high, and they told me my front lambda sensor wasn't switching when the car warmed up. Bought the new sensor and fitted it and i think the CO dropped down to about 0.15 (limit is 0.5), and HC dropped down to 78, limit is 200. This was on the fast idle so it was well within the limits

[mada01]

ahhhh im cleaning mine on friday, saturday is my travelling day

[Stemh]

just a quick pic which i bought while i was at FITP, even though i didnt notice the guy taking the pictures

[jonyb4]

[Tweek]

That's a nice pic

[FiestaBen]

Mmmm I love your car!

[Stemh]

Bit more bad luck with this car unfortunately!

on my way home from work yesterday, oil light started flickering on and off so pulled over, let it settle for 10 minutes, checked the oil and it was almost full :S

started it up again and there was a mixture of knocking from the bottom of engine and tapping from the top!

Limped the rest of the way home. Thought id look at the knocking from the bottom first because this sounded worse. Dropped sump off and checked for any play in each of the big end bearings.

The big end bearings for cylinder one had a lot of play in it, took the cap off and one of the bearings had spun and was more or less sat on top of the other on the piston side

So its not looking good for the mondeo!!






LOTS of scoring and bits broken off. Had a good few bits of metal in the bottom of the sump and some bits in the oil pickup pipe.

[jonyb4]

oh s**t, really not finding much luck with this are you

is it very high milage? or it must have been abused at a younger age

im sure you can still make peace of the situation though, replace the shims and id get new cap bolts while your at it mate, or if your feeling genorous some ARP bolts

[jayrs]

that aint good mate

[Stemh]

yeah bit gutted really,

car is very high mileage at 162k, but i know a lot of the v6s that have gone for longer than that. it also had a full ford service history up to about 135k miles and a lot of reciepts, so i think it has been looked after.

dont want to go replacing them yet, going to have a good check over he bottom end to see if theres any more bearings on their way out. Gonna try to check the main bearings too because if theres damage or wear to them, then theres not much point in replacing the big ends.

could be the end of this engine

[jonyb4]

dont go writing the whole engine off to hastily mate, could be a quick save, just check all the botton bearings, you should idealy replace all 6 now anwyay to prevent it happening again in a few 1,000 miles

you explained that it wasnt running very long fromt he first instance of knocking, which is good as you have likely prevented any major damage but if need be remove that piston the bottom bearing went on and replace the small end bearing on it too just to be sure incase it suffered any sideways movement and damaged to shim

will be much cheaper than a new/used engine

[jayrs]

to be fair, looking at them bigends, the cranks f**cked and needs a regrind, so it dont matter whats going on with the mains, if it needs a grind you just as well do them as well.

you gotta find out what caused this, you say there was loads of oil, so its got to be a oil problems, pump would be the first place i would look.

also, the filter, did you fit the right one?

all in all, your going to need the crank done no matter what, do not waste your money putting new shells in, becuase less that 100 miles later there be in the same condition as the ones you took out.

or get a replacment engine.

[Smo]

Find a cheap replacement engine!

[jonyb4]

dont know if its an option but theres a ST24 in the scrap yard near me, still has the engine