I Own a Wheeled Toilet! Vent About Automotive Nightmares

2004 Buick Rendezous 70000 miles boiling over and new gasket/head needed. Can't be repaired and needs a new engine for $5000. That's more than the car is worth. ALL Detroit is c rap and the only way to win is not to play. This the point when some very fortunate, yet to be screwed, owner tells us everything is OK. Buy overseas stuff or old iron.

I hear that! Our Grand Marquis is 27 years old this year, 200k miles, original engine, tranny, power steering pump, and A/C compressor (whole system original aside from o-rings & refrigerant). Why the hell can't they build all vehicles like this? Starts right up every day as it has for the past 10 years of ownership. Not a hint of smoke out the pipe either. Love that car.

Got my $50 back for the tensioner. Guy was going to give me a store credit, and the manager overheard my disgust with that idea, and gave me cash. $80 for a new tensioner at Ford. Of course, not in stock. Then another $20 good will into my neighbor's tank for letting me take his spankin' new $50k Ecoboost to the store ... unsupervised.

$100 today. *censored* Ficus!

Those box-body Crown Vic's and Grand Marquis were sure nice cars. Town Cars too...but it is rare to find a low mileage example for a reasonable price...especially if it is black on black.

My 2001 Grand Marquis is doing fine with my 75 mile per day commute. I am really enjoying the new/upgraded headlights...should have done it years ago.

Yeah I just did ours this winter. Haven't been able to test it due to the time of year, but I can tell the way it lights up the garage it's 1,000% better. Crazy how bright HID's are.

This last tensioner f-up on the Ficus was the closest we've come to destroying that brand new cylinder head.

ALMOST!!!

Marquis HID's - check out the difference between the stock HI beam and HID low!!

If this was at a Genuine Ford dealership, I would write a nice letter and mail a copy of the video to the corporate office. Giving you your money back is a joke, they should be shut down and in jail.

coalnewbie wrote:This is one of the many reasons I refuse to enter the new truck nightmare. F350 1997 needed a new steering pump so being lazy and having a bad back got it done at a local chop shop that lasted 2 days and the whine was back and no fluid. HAHA says I, I obviously need a Ford genuine replacement to went to a local Ford stealership and said only new ford stuff please. 6 hours later at $90/hour I got the truck back and a bill that included a new pump for about $150. As I am old and crabby and before I paid the bill I upped the hood and showed the service manager that the pump had not been replaced. Got my HDVR-150 off the windscreen taped the manager lying, pump pic and the bill. He gave it to me for free after threatening legal action. That lasted 48 hours too. PHK them all I will do it myself in the spring. All I need is enough home brewed beer and a few advil b4 doing the dirty.

Love my new toy it's true HD this is only at 720.....





This Englishman is in NYS and is pushing back.

Focus lives .... AGAIN.

Talk about dodging a bullet!! The belt DID jump time!! Cam was advanced 4 teeth!! WOW what a close friggin call!! I would have been posting video of a car fire if the worst happened .....

Boy am I sick of working on this thing. Sad ... this timing tensioner deal has become so routine that I did the job in an hour - and that's wasting 20 minutes fighting with the 2 covers. The lower one has 1" long super-fine thread bolts that take FOREVER to thread in ... and on top of it, there's about 1mm clearance for the ratchet - no way in hell of getting the air tools in there. Very aggravating ... Then the top cover wouldn't sit flush for some unknown reason. There's no dowels anywhere - just 2 little tabs on the bottom that each go around the head, but the power steering pump and hoses hanging off it make it awkward to work with. Why it wouldn't sit flush defied explanation. Then after flipping out, I grab it & it sits flush all by itself. Go figure that one. Hogged it down with the air ratchet & moved onward.

Now with a genuine FoMoCo tensioner, HOPEFULLY this will be the LAST time I EVER see that timing belt again!!

I'm not real familiar with the Focus tensioner, but if it's anything like the one on my VW TDI, it has only one proper direction of rotation when tensioning the belt, even though it appears it could be turned either way to achieve tension. One way will last 100,000 miles, the other way will last long enough to get you to the tow truck.

Chris

This one, there's no possible way to get it wrong. It's painfully simple ..... yet painfully unreliable. At least the Dayco tensioners were anyway ...

There's a flat spot on the back of the tensioner that sits on a machined flat spot on the head. The bolt won't line up if it's not right, because it's offset.

New project: Coolant in oil, '99 7.3 powerstroke 270,000 miles. Failed front cover gasket, have to pull oil pan and engine to remove front cover (oil pickup tube bolted to front cover inside oil pan. Missing bolt coupled with rusted exhaust backpressure sensor tube jetting hot exhaust on part of front cover w/ missing bolt caused gasket to fail leading to coolant in oil. What a pain in the ass. Could have been worse - thankful I have the 7.3, only took me 5 hours or so to pull engine.

BTW, I love this stuff - if you want a leakproof seal everytime and still want to be able to disassmble parts, use this: http://www.autohausaz.com/search/product.aspx?par ... erm=246948

thankful I have the 7.3

Amen to that one.

At 270K at least you got your money's worth. Still plenty of life left I bet.

I'd be afraid to let that big diesel hang on my engine stand - I'd have to put a jack under it. Can't trust the chinese crap out there today. That thing would probably snap my cherry picker.

Update: 3,500 miles on the new Ficus (fake tree, fake car! ) tensioner. Lesson learned - steer clear of chain autoparts stores when buying critical engine components.

That's my 4 wheel drive truck. Yes, 270k I thought I had a cracked block (oil cooler, injector cups etc. leak fuel/oil into coolant, not the other way around). Only way to get coolant into oil w/ none the other way around was to have a cracked block (or blown head gasket but that just doesn't happen on these engines - 18 bolts per head) or bad front cover gasket - and guess what that's what it was thankfully. Compression is over 400 on all cylenders and it looks brand new inside, cross hatching on all cylenders, no ridges and no sludge or even soot staining on the iron. coolant passages were shiny.

Nice. Sounds like she's ready to work another 14+ years.

Berlin, you get that motor back in ???

Had to yank the 7.3 from my 2000 F250 SD 4 years ago due to hole in oil pan from the inside out. I'm still trying to figure out how that happens !!!!

Was real fun getting to the exhaust clamps under the cowl. Then had 1 clamp bolt that I had to use the wizzer to cut it off. Then trying to get in out....What a royal PITA. If I have to do it again, I will definitely pull the cab off to do it.

As Smitty said, that is a hell of a load on the engine stand. I was using a super strong cherry picker to get my engine out. Nice long reach with room to spare. After getting the engine out, I left it on the lift to change the pan. Sitting there eating lunch, I heard a slight noise and the lift chains rattle. Seems like the ram cylinder seal gave out. Luckily I had the safety pin in place so it did not drop to the floor damaging the brand new oil pan I had just installed. The problem now was how to get it off the lift and on to another. Managed to borrow another cherry picker but it was a little under rated. Had to shorten up on the lift arm length. But did manage to switch lifts. But now with the shorter arm, it really became the issue to reinstall.

Definitely not 1 of Ford's brighter ideas.....

Rick

Someone was just telling me they designed these trucks for a quick cab removal. Doesn't sound fun no matter what they designed ... but apparently you just unplug all the wires in one shot, then unbolt the cab and steering column and that's it. I just turned down a job doing heads on one of these. After explaining to me how "easy" it was lifting the cab, I said no thanks! Might be easy with a lift ... but I've got wood and jack stands.