hello everyone,

i am writing this anonymously as the garage owners may well be active on this forum,

in december 24 a garage took my car in for head gasket failure on my 1.0 ecoboost fiesta, approx 50k miles

a few weeks later it was ready to collect, the following work was carried out.

- cylinder head gasket replacement with head recondition, replacement cylinder head, water pump supply and fit

the total bill was just shy of £3000, an eye watering amount especially for someone as young as me.

i made sure to drive the car very gently to allow all parts to wear in, i've put on about 1500 miles since the rebuild, all of which was careful driving.

about a week or so later the car was idling rough, he advised to have all modifications removed, which i followed.

had tune removed, all induction hoses returned to stock aswell as the intercooler.

the car was still running rough, but i left it as it was on my driveway for a few weeks as I was busy with work and now have another vehicle to get around.

yesterday i took the car to my local garage for diagnosis, they ran a compression test, and cylinder 3 has no compression, you can hear it sounds like its running on 2 cylinders and very much lacks power. to diagnose further the head has to come off

the guys at the garage want nothing to do with it, they're claiming that this is due to the map that was on my car and some bodge modifications that were done on my driveway caused this, despite me doing as they said and returned the car to stock about 2 weeks after i got the car back, done by a garage, my hands haven't been near it

after i asked the man on the phone for advise on what to do, he said 'list it for spares and repairs' which i found rather insulting.

I'm now £3000 out of pocket and have a dead motor sat on my driveway with little knowledge of how to move forward.

the garage is halfway up the country from me as they are so called ecoboost specialists, and i thought spending the extra money would be worth it.

i apologise if this isn't necessarily suitable for this forum, but im very frustrated and stressed out, and dont know what to do.

if anyone has any advise for me i would really appreciate it. thanks guys!

I'm sorry to hear your troubles.

1 hour ago, fezbomb101 said:

cylinder head gasket replacement with head recondition, replacement cylinder head, water pump supply and fit

They reconditioned the head AND replaced it? That's a bit of a red flag

Were the wet belts done at the same time?

Was it in fact oil starvation due to wet belt degradation that was causing the original fault?

 

Bolt on upgrade parts, unless you messed with the turbo, would never cause any issues.

A dodgy "innit-doh" laptop remap will though.

Who supplied the remap?

What remap was done to the car? What level?

Unfortunately the engine is scrap, I would either "loose" the car, your own imagination can work that one out.

Or, source a perfectly good, running replacement, that you've seen running, get the belts changed and stick that in.

That's all you can do really.

29 minutes ago, DaveT70 said:

Bolt on upgrade parts, unless you messed with the turbo, would never cause any issues.

A dodgy "innit-doh" laptop remap will though.

Who supplied the remap?

What remap was done to the car? What level?

hey dave!

the car went in with head gasket failure, but the wet belt was changed while it was there.

the remap was done by a local remapping company, he is fully insured and very well known for high quality maps, he is not some bloke mapping cars in his shed

the map took the car to a supposed 135ish bhp from 100, by far not a overtly stressful tune as i exaggerated to him i wanted a safer map.

and no i have not messed with the turbo at all.

i guess im really asking if its the fault of the garage, in an ideal world i want them to take it back and have a look at it, because there is no way i could have blown up the engine in such a short time, beforehand this map was on my car for around 10 months no problems whatsover.

18 minutes ago, fezbomb101 said:

i guess im really asking if its the fault of the garage, in an ideal world i want them to take it back and have a look at it, because there is no way i could have blown up the engine in such a short time, beforehand this map was on my car for around 10 months no problems whatsover.

While you have my sympathy, I have to say spending money to repair an Ecoboost 1.0 very rarely ends well. Once you have a suspected problem like a head gasket it's time to replace the engine. You paid around £3000 to have an engine repaired, when a brand new genuine Ford 1.0 engine could have been supplied and fitted for £3300 complete with a full years guarantee.

What's done, is now done. The garage perhaps should have advised, indeed warned you that the 1.0 Ecoboost has a very poor history of being successfully repaired and lasting any serious amount of time. Do I think the garage should take the car back, probably no.

45 minutes ago, fezbomb101 said:

the remap was done by a local remapping company, he is fully insured and very well known for high quality maps, he is not some bloke mapping cars in his shed

I urge you then to test his theory, if the garage blame the remap and he is insured, claim a new engine from him.

I guarantee, he can't put the money where his mouth is

45 minutes ago, fezbomb101 said:

guess im really asking if its the fault of the garage, in an ideal world i want them to take it back and have a look at it, because there is no way i could have blown up the engine in such a short time, beforehand this map was on my car for around 10 months no problems whatsover.

I think you'll find @unofix is correct, once the death knell sounds on an Ecoboom it's curtains.

As he says, for the money you spent Pumaspeed would've fitted you a brand new engine, with 12 months warranty.

Your only option is to ditch the car or replace the engine, sorry.

Wet belt partial breakage blocks oil pump. Even if you repair it may not last long. Re-mapping a ***** engine is Disasterous not recommended. Bite the  bullet get rid,  buy an old fiesta with dry belt and 4 cylinders. my other car is a 5 door fiesta mk6 1.6 tdci 82K new belt goes like a dream 64 mpg 17 years old. It looks a bit/ lot dated but its soo cheap to run.

On 3/6/2025 at 1:04 PM, DaveT70 said:

They reconditioned the head AND replaced it? That's a bit of a red flag

To be honest in my opinion this is not strange at all.

The only reason why you would need to replace the cylinder head on these engines is because it is cracked. This is not uncommon on this type of engine if it suffered from overheating. However a cracked cylinder head can usually only be diagnosed properly during the pressure tests that are performed after being skimmed and reconditioned.

These cylinder heads are supplied completely empty (just the aluminium casting) without any of the other parts. When the cylinder head needs to be replaced all parts need to be removed from the old cylinder head, cleaned, reconditioned and installed into the new cylinder head.

What is important however: Did the garage install a new genuine Ford cylinder head or a cheaper aftermarket one. Lately the cheaper (Chinese) aftermarket cylinder heads seems to be offered from various part suppliers. These are about half the price of a new genuine Ford cylinder head but the long term quality seems to be still unknown.


Unfortunately head gasket replacements on a 1.0 ECOboost engine are rarely successful. In case of overheating a failed headgasket is quite rare. Other internal engine parts usually fail before the headgasket fails. In many cases additional (engine) damage is found after the cylinder head is removed or an engine failure occurs shortly after being repaired. 

As far as I understand the garage only performed a headgasket change, wetbelt change and installed a new cylinder head. This is not exactly a difficult job but the enormous amount of labour involved makes it an expensive job. It acually equals the cost of a fully installed brand new service engine.

In my opinion the garage can only be blamed if the current fault is caused by the newly installed head gasket or cylinder head. If the fault has a different cause like for example like for example engine damage that was not yet visible during the performed works (which is highly likely) the garage cannot be blamed.

The only way to determine whether the garage did something wrong is by disassembling the engine and performing a thorough root cause analysis to determine the cause of the problem. However the costs involved can be excessive and can easily be higher than the cost of a new engine.  

I feel so sorry reading stories like this. When I bought my Focus some years back, I had no idea of the issues with the EcoBoost engine, and it's only sheer luck I didn't end up with one. Ford really did a number on their customers by not only introducing such a fragile engine, but then washing their hands of the issue when it became clear of it's inherent weaknesses...

On 3/8/2025 at 8:06 AM, JW1982 said:

To be honest in my opinion this is not strange at all.

Really?

So reconditioning the head then binning it and replacing it doesn't scare you?

It does me

You either recondition it OR replace it, not both

Perhaps I'm not with it or something.

On 3/8/2025 at 8:51 AM, StephenFord said:

but then washing their hands of the issue when it became clear of it's inherent weaknesses...

I think it's coming back to bite them now, they sold so many in Europe