Ok just wanted to update everyone. The car I had thought was a steal at $1800… had a head gasket leak. It also had a rotting tailpipe and muffler (which I knew about from the purchase date when I got underneath the car and wasn’t particularly worried about fixing). I considered fumbling around on the Escort myself and changing the head gasket myself, and I probably could have done it if I watched enough videos, but I decided to have a mechanic friend repair both issues at his home garage for a good price. It took him 2 weeks of working on it in his spare time (he also works 40 hours a week at the same place I work, and also we had Christmas week in there too). But it’s done and I’m happy with the price.
When he changed the head gasket, I asked him to look at the head and tell me what he thought. He said it seemed fine, not that it couldn’t crack later on but that for now it was fine. That reassured me a lot, and I’m glad I have my little beater with 71,000 miles back on the road.
So far I buy into the general idea that these are pretty good cars, aside from that one major issue of the valve seats. But it’s fine for now, and I don’t drive it hard so I don’t expect to overheat the engine.
Head gasket, timing belt, water pump and component kit, and also the exhaust replaced. Feel good about the car for a while now. Very little rust on it for a 24 year old car in the Boston area. And also I don’t think I’ll have to worry about the cylinder head for the time being, as long as I continue not abusing it.
I’m very late to this party as I wasn’t around back in Sept to give my experiences…
I won’t say what I would have advised, but I’ve got plenty of personal experience with the Ford dropped valve seats, so I’ll give thoughts on where to go from here. It was a thing on the Ford SPI engines, both 1.9L and 2.0L that went into both Escorts and then the Focus. And it was the brittle/poor quality alloy of the seat inserts.
Escort 1: 1991 1.9L 5 speed that went over 200K with no issues. Eventually gave it to my niece - at some point later something went awry in the manual trans and it went to scrap.
Escort 2: 1997 2.0L auto wagon. Still in my possession and running and driving great - over 400K on the body. But on its 3rd engine and 4th cylinder head. * First 2 engines went due to dropped valve seats. Main warning symptom: occasional/random bad misfiring (flashing engine light). It was always on #4 which seems to be the most common. It would misfire like mad and then just … run great again. Multiple shops had no answer for me (and I didn’t know about the issue yet).
Engine 3 came with a whole parts car (bonus!) As soon as I got the first cyl 4 misfire I parked it in the garage and installed a re-manned head with the upgraded valve seats. (My first cylinder head job - on this car it’s pretty darned easy!) That was over 200K ago and it’s been great ever since.
Escort 3: 1999 2.0L. Picked it up running and driving and on the road for all of $600 - I did think of it as a beater/throw-away. Did my best to check it for signs of an issue (e.g. test drove it with a vacuum gauge hooked up to watch for weird little glitches as they DO show up if the valve seat gets funky). Well…one day it just dropped a valve seat on a restart. No warnings. It can happen that way.
So anyway…I’m 4/5 on the wrong end of that stick. Why did I keep that '97 wagon on the road so long? These things are so darned easy to work on and maintain, with cheap and plentiful parts. (I bought the parts car running and driving great for all of $700). They get over 30mpg. And outside the one, dumb valve seat thing they are virtually trouble free. As a wagon the thing was also wildly useful. You can treat these as throwaway cars - but you can also keep them on the road about forever without even trying all that hard - for next to nothing in $$.
Never ignore your check engine light. If you get a warning it will likely be something like a cylinder 4 misfire. One other thing I’d gotten was a weird, loud slapping noise from the engine - sharp sound as if a little imp was in there smacking something with a hammer.
Maintain the cooling system really well. If it ever overheats and you want to keep it - buy the remanned head and take it back to your friend. (Or just do it - it’s not hard).
If it’s an automatic, get the transmission pan/filter service about every 25-40K (depending on driving). It’s a F4EAT and they failed a lot … unless the fluid / filter are maintained. My current one is something over 200K and is still great.
If it does happen to drop a seat, it’s toast. But if you want to keep it on the road, don’t do the junk yard route unless it gets a new head before install. Or look at something like Jasper.
Interesting. It’s hard to imagine how that mistake could even happen, given that valve seat technology must be pretty well established. Wondering, when they fail, do the seats tend to just come loose and fall out whole, or do they first start to crack, break apart, then fall out in pieces? Fords of that era tended to get some complaints here about faulty egr system, esp their egr modulator. Did you have that problem?
I think it’s any or all of the above. Annoyingly enough I also have an old beater '97 Ranger with a 2.3L (240Kish) that is apparently prone to getting recessed valve seats - which I now have. I knew nothing of either of these things before I bought… Of course, I only paid $1000 for the Ranger and more than got my $$ from it. It was going to be a “forever” beater truck, but for various reasons it’s not worth throwing a new head on it.
The only trouble I had with the EGR was a rusted pipe once (but I had a spare from the parts car!). But I also cleaned it up once in a while.
Just for kicks, on that '99 Escort, here’s what th piston looked like after it dropped a seat (and a big chunk of the skirt ended up in the oil pan).
The head should have been redone or replaced with a retrofitted one since it had to come off for the head gasket job and the labor would have been largely the same. This would have been a great excuse to fix it right and never worry about it again.
