I ain’t met many troublemakers with as patchy a history as Ford’s 1.0-liter, three-cylinder EcoBoost. When it ain’t those dual wet belts breaking down and causing a ruckus in the oiling system, it’s the tensioner pulling the strings behind ’em. The judge finally handed down the 1.0’s sentence earlier this year, but its kind still lurks in dark corners of every parking lot from Detroit to Davenport. And according to county postmortem, there are plenty more ways this Ecoboost can still mug ya.
Okay, it was more like a tipoff from a guy he knows, I Do Cars on YouTube. He scraps jalopies and sells off their parts. The latest basket case in his neck of the woods is apparently a 2016 Ford Focus, which reached the end of the road at just 121,000 miles.
The usual culprit behind these 1.0-liter Ford killings are those “wet” belts turning the timing belt and oil pump. If they don’t get their special oil, they supposedly crumble.
That tensioner’s a loose cannon too. But his and the belts’ alibis checked out this time—they’re intact. No holes in the stories of the bearings in the top or bottom ends, nor the cams and crank. The only bad egg in this dozen is the head gasket, breached between cylinders. The head and block don’t look cracked either, so no part of this motor holds a smoking gun.
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