Bad Ford Focus Engines

1. 72

   sassygrrl32posted 11 years ago

   This is not something I would normally talk about here on HP but due to a recent development I decided to discuss it.
   
   I've been a Ford fan for a while now and do love Ford. I love my Taurus's even though I've done a fair amount of work on them.
   
   I can't however, in good concscience recommend a Ford Focus to anyone. I like the design but.....
   My husband has a 2001 Ford Focus he's been driving for about 3 yrs with only 103,000 miles(relatively low miles) and just the other day the engine took a crap. What actually happened was the valve seat broke off destroying the engine. My mechanic(and two others, got three opinions) says this is very common among Focus's.
   I thought getting a valve job on my Taurus at 175,000 miles was awful well, let me tell you if you are considering a used 4 cylinder car DO NOT consider a Ford Focus.
   My mechanic has been telling me for awhile now that Focus's are not very good cars and my husband ignored it because he just liked it so much and got good gas mileage. We finally decided to sell it and it crapped before we could.
   My mechanic said another customer had a Kia with only 26,000 miles and it did the same thing with the valve seat breaking. And the warranty wouldn't cover it. I have a warranty too and am scared they will not cover it. The ones I bought didn't pay for themselves and if u need an engine or transmission, there is a very good chance they will wriggle out of it.
   They covered the valve job on my Taurus(but only a partial valve job) and refused to pay the shop after they approved the repair. Took almost a month of fighting with the warranty company and mechanic telling me I was going to have to pay for the repair because warranty wasn't paying. For the most part warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on.
   
   I decided to put this out here because if you are thinking of purchasing a Focus(I don't care what year) I highly recommend against it and if you have one I highly recommend you sell it before it's too late.
   Unfortunately for us we have another one(2007) with a loan not paid off and I'm too far upside down in it to trade it.
   Mechanic says Toyota engines are good but I'l probably never consider another 4 cylinder and I don't care how gas saving they are.

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   1. 74

      Reality Bytesposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      The Ford Focus pretty much uses the powertrain from the Escort, which has a long standing reputation as being a solid vehicle.  I have never heard anything bad about the Focus until I saw this thread.  If not properly maintained, any vehicle will have issues.  Failure to change the antifreeze for example, will lead to gasket issues.  I would highly recommend the Focus to anyone.  Of course, conducting maintenance on schedule is a must for any vehicle!
      
      
      
      http://www.edmunds.com/ford/focus/

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      1. 72

         sassygrrl32posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Unfortunately, maintenance has nothing to do with this issue of the valve seat breaking. We have always maintained the vehicle with flushes and oil changes. But we got the vehicle with 85,000 miles so I don't know how it was maintained before that. I have some maintanance records but not all. The 3 mechanics I talked to said maintenance has nothing to do with it. It's a design flaw that goes all the way back to 1991 in the escorts but they didn't have the issue as badly as 2000-2004 Focuses with SOHC-Split Port Induction engines. The mechanics said this issue can go into the 2005 and 2006's as well. I didn't read as much about it though and didn't see anything on the 2007. As much as I like Ford I can't recommend them to anyone. If u were looking at 4400 for a new engine with one that crapped at 103,000 u wouldn't recommend them either. But this is good news knowing that not too many people know about this issue. It will be easier to sell the car. The warranty agreed to cover up to 3000. Thzt means a used engine, then off car as quickly as possible.

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