38 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Even if it is clean (which can't be checked before buying!) why spend a lot of money buying an 8 year old used car, knowing that you'd have to spend another £1000 on changing the belt in 2 years time?

It just doesn't make financial sense to me.  But worse than that, you'd have no choice but to have it done, as no trader would buy or part ex one of these due a belt change so it'll be worthless at 10 years old without belt history.  (Suppose you could offload it onto some poor unsuspecting private buyer, depending on your own morals).  

Two days ago I spoke with a woman who has just had the timing belts changed at the Ford dealer service - 1200 euro in Bulgaria (both wet belts, water pump, oil and all filters). The mean salary in Sofia 1500 euro. She said she loves her 10 year second hand red Ford Focus titanium and doesn't regret! 

21 minutes ago, Tony Roman said:

Two days ago I spoke with a woman who has just had the timing belts changed at the Ford dealer service - 1200 euro in Bulgaria (both wet belts, water pump, oil and all filters). The mean salary in Sofia 1500 euro. She said she loves her 10 year second hand red Ford Focus titanium and doesn't regret! 

The things people will do for love!

Well I'll be ringing back up at dinner to cancel... a guy on another forum was having a go saying I was soft for listening to others... a few hours later he replied saying his engine management light had come on... 🙂

Just now, ddixon said:

Well I'll be ringing back up at dinner to cancel... a guy on another forum was having a go saying I was soft for listening to others... a few hours later he replied saying his engine management light had come on... 🙂

You're in no way soft for protecting your wallet. You've done the right thing. I've had 20+ new Fords since 1999 but had to get away. Best thing I ever did

3 minutes ago, DaveT70 said:

You're in no way soft for protecting your wallet. You've done the right thing. I've had 20+ new Fords since 1999 but had to get away. Best thing I ever did

I've had 2 and they didn't give me many issues. But back to Korean/Japanese from now on.

1 minute ago, iantt said:

I've had 2 and they didn't give me many issues. But back to Korean/Japanese from now on.

both 1.o ecoboosts? What mileage

Just spoke with the dealer.. not one word to persuade me, must know what they're like

I was reading March's issue of WhatCar magazine last night and got to the page on second-hand buys and they were recommending the Ford Fiesta with.......you guessed it - the 1.0 Litre 99bhp Ecoboom engine 😲😲

1 minute ago, Phil3747 said:

I was reading March's issue of WhatCar magazine last night and got to the page on second-hand buys and they were recommending the Ford Fiesta with.......you guessed it - the 1.0 Litre 99bhp Ecoboom engine 😲😲

Just the luck of the draw I guess, the MR2 I owned had horror stories of pre-cats breaking down and getting sucked back into the engine, I never removed pre-cats and never had any issues, that car was 16 years old.

9 minutes ago, Nimrodmk8 said:

Just the luck of the draw I guess, the MR2 I owned had horror stories of pre-cats breaking down and getting sucked back into the engine, I never removed pre-cats and never had any issues, that car was 16 years old.

People kept telling me not to buy a Mk2 Focus with the DV6 engine as the turbo would explode...  Had no end of DPF issues, glowplugs failed (triggering limp mode), wishbone bushes failed, reverse switch failed...but the turbo never showed any signs of failure at all.

Few years before that I was considering a Mk4 Golf.  Went on the forums, stating that I wanted the PD engine, but was generally unlucky and couldn't risk the 'chocolate camshaft'.  Forum members were quick to tell me that only the 150ps version was affected.  So I bought a 130ps version.  6 months later I had a smooth camshaft and dented lifters.  Turned out it wasn't just the 150's affected after all.  

I do try to offer that balance on here.  The majority of cars have at least one common fault.  It's really up to each owner to decide how much risk they want to take, and whether they'd rather have looks or power over reliability for example.

2 hours ago, Phil3747 said:

I was reading March's issue of WhatCar magazine last night and got to the page on second-hand buys and they were recommending the Ford Fiesta with.......you guessed it - the 1.0 Litre 99bhp Ecoboom engine 😲😲

Yes, I've noticed the mags continuing to recommend them. I've written to What Car and Autocar several times in the last couple of years pointing out the looming glut of ecoboosts requiring belt replacement at 10 years, let alone the increasing rate of premature failures seen on this and other forums. Needless to say, none of them were published.

No doubt at some point the press will latch on to this as if they've suddenly made a great discovery.

 

6 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

I've written to What Car and Autocar

.....mmmmmm

A conflict of interests I wonder ? 🤔

Who spends lots and lots of money advertising in these car magazines ? 😉

FWIW, some of you know I replaced a wet belt (amongst lots of other parts) about a year ago and the engine then failed for other reasons - after less than 5k miles. I still have the car in pieces.

I noticed a couple of days ago whilst surveying this abomination of an engine that the belt has already started to deteriorate, mainly along the edges and a few places on the teeth. The belt is the Dayco brand (same company who supply Ford) and the oil I used was Petronas Syntium 5000FR conforming to the required spec. WSS-M2C948-B.

 

59 minutes ago, unofix said:

A conflict of interests I wonder ? 🤔

Its a funny one. Obviously, as you suggest, there are a lot of car ads in the motoring press (though there seem to be more in the online versions than the hard copies these days).

I have seen quite a lot of criticism of Fords from readers letters and journos - the suspension of the Mustang Mach E has had a lot of stick for instance. Other makes also get their share - VWs touchscreens and capacitive "buttons" on Mk 8 Golf and the various ID models especially.

But the ecoboost - nothing afaik. I wonder if it's collective embarrassment at their unbridled enthusiasm for it when it emerged - looking at reviews from 10-12 years back it's the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel.

Oddly nobody seemed to rave about VWs triple which made its debut about the same time, nor have I seen the number of problems on the various VW group websites. The crucial difference seems to be that the VW offering has a conventional dry belt** which may also have an easier life, VW not having pushed it beyond 110-115ps, preferring to use a 1.4/1.5 for higher power applications.

**We got ours in the Mrs's car changed for £300 at our local independent.

 

 

I love mine, and I guess I'm in the unique position by the sounds of it where I paid a little extra for the car but in the knowledge that the dealer replaced the belts as part of the work done to the car to prepare it for sale. Purchased a Jan 2013 registered car in Jan 2023 at 47k miles.

I have a fresh belt, I've changed the coolant degas hose to the facelift version, I'm currently looking at 16k miles per year, doing oil changes myself every 6 months (which will work out around 8k miles) and back to the dealer annually for the MOT and service (Ford Assist is a nice bonus to keep up).

That all said, I've ringfenced £3k in savings as that's the cost of a crate engine from Pumaspeed, but hopefully it won't come to that.

If you look online on owners forums and facebook etc, you get a LOT of negativity surrounding these engines, but we also have to realise that it will be a bit of an echo chamber - people are more likely to register and post if they're having issues - and with the greatest respect, "generic Ford 1.0 owner" is less likely to register for the sake of it and post positively.

Especially considering just how many of these engines are out there in different models of Ford.

To put it into perspective, most of the people I've spoken to in real life compliment the engine and if they've had one, they've generally loved them. I've even said "I'm aware it's got the EcoBoom nickname" to which the majority of people reply "I haven't heard that one before". 

Are they flawed? Probably yes. Are they susceptible to lack of proper maintenance? Yes - but then what engine isn't?

 

Edited June 15, 20232 yr by YOG
ALREADY POSTED EARLIER ON.

19 minutes ago, YOG said:

 

That video already posted about 12 posts in. 

2 hours ago, iantt said:

That video already posted about 12 posts in. 

👍Don't know how I missed that! I'm going to remove my post with it.

I watched the first half or so of that video earlier before he started to get on my *****. That thumbnail is everything that is wrong with modern YouTube  

Obviously shows the degradation of the belt but the original failure appears to be a freak tensioner failure which seized the oil pump belt and stripped it.

But I do also feel inclined to point out he commented it was hard to get hold of one, has no idea on the history of the engine, the mileage, how it was used etc. 

I don’t want to appear as though I’m defending the engine because I have one, but also you can’t declare it the worst modern engine when you’ve looked at a single example which has suffered a terminal breakdown. 

1 hour ago, dontpannic said:

I don’t want to appear as though I’m defending the engine because I have one

Whatever would give anyone that idea 🤣

I agree the video is not presented in a 'British' way, and that it is not to the liking of some (myself included). However you make a comment "but the original failure appears to be a freak tensioner". How do any of us know that failure of the tensioner isn't far more common than any of us would expect. A full postmortem on the death of a Ecoboost 1.0 is not often carried out as it is too expensive and pointless once wet cambelt failure  is established.

In the video he makes the comment that "it has been difficult to get one of these engines because they are in high demand and everyone is after them". That tells me the rate of failure of these engines is unusually high. I'm not putting forward reasons as to why that might be, as everyone will have their own thoughts. What I will say is most other types of engines can normally be found in scrapyards with only a few phone calls which suggests other engines are not failing in such large numbers.

Is it the 'Worst Modern Engine ?'

My personal thoughts is that at the present time I can't think of another engine that is worse for suffering so many catastrophic failures. I know that there are many engines by many manufactures that have design flaws and common failures, but most don't usually result in the total loss of the engine.

However we should not forget that 1.0 Ecoboost was an engine of the year for 5 years in a row. Hence most probably it was also sold in very large numbers (production up to 1 500 000 per year). I haven't read the sales statistics but I can bet that it is among the most common engines on the road in UK today. It is always the best football player who suffers the most frequent injuries. I am far from thinking its the best engine but obviously it is a modern engine which performs much better than many 1,6 4 cylinder petrol engines, but YES it also require special care to be kept in shape. The owners of these engines should be very well informed about all the specifics in engine service and I think it is Ford responsibility to do that in a proper way to prevent these failures.

6 hours ago, unofix said:

Whatever would give anyone that idea 🤣

I agree the video is not presented in a 'British' way, and that it is not to the liking of some (myself included). However you make a comment "but the original failure appears to be a freak tensioner". How do any of us know that failure of the tensioner isn't far more common than any of us would expect. A full postmortem on the death of a Ecoboost 1.0 is not often carried out as it is too expensive and pointless once wet cambelt failure  is established.

In the video he makes the comment that "it has been difficult to get one of these engines because they are in high demand and everyone is after them". That tells me the rate of failure of these engines is unusually high. I'm not putting forward reasons as to why that might be, as everyone will have their own thoughts. What I will say is most other types of engines can normally be found in scrapyards with only a few phone calls which suggests other engines are not failing in such large numbers.

Is it the 'Worst Modern Engine ?'

My personal thoughts is that at the present time I can't think of another engine that is worse for suffering so many catastrophic failures. I know that there are many engines by many manufactures that have design flaws and common failures, but most don't usually result in the total loss of the engine.

Just a couple of thoughts - how do we know that there’s high demand for the engines over there?

You could look at that snippet of information in another way, in that lots of these engines are outlasting the cars that they are put into if they’re ending up at dismantlers with working engines.

Being North American market, with a penchant for larger capacity engines I would suggest (with no statistics to back it up, granted) there are fewer 1.0 engines across the pond regardless - and if they’re so bad and unreliable then why would people be looking for used ticking timebombs with unknown history to replace them?

Searching eBay over here I’m swimming in results  

As for other unreliable engines, 1.8TSI, N47 or that turbocharged PSA Mini lump to name but a few. Anyone reading about wet belts must think that chain driven engines will never fail. 

I just think there is a lot of hyperbole out there. Sure, the failure rate seems high and I’m not disputing that, but in European markets the 1.0 engine is extremely common, considering the vast range of models and volumes it was sold in.

 

Of course all this might come back and bite me in the *****, but here’s hoping not!!

My local independent garage now change wetbelts for £1050 exc oil belt. They Have already changed 2 past week. 

Not regretting getting my 1.0 wet belt changed, runs fine, although my local didn't have the tools when I got it done so had to take it to another place. Did a 500 mile round trip to Devon the other week on it, no failures. 2013 so Got the belt changed at 10 year + 2 month, on 65k miles. 2k miles into my new belt.

On 6/14/2023 at 4:45 PM, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Yes, I've noticed the mags continuing to recommend them. I've written to What Car and Autocar several times in the last couple of years pointing out the looming glut of ecoboosts requiring belt replacement at 10 years, let alone the increasing rate of premature failures seen on this and other forums. Needless to say, none of them were published.

No doubt at some point the press will latch on to this as if they've suddenly made a great discovery.

 

Just been reading the latest issue of Autocar and finally(!) the wet belt change gets a mention: "Don't buy one unless the all-important work has been carried out"