Some are. Lol

I replaced all my rear bushes in the summer with poly bushes ,apart from the the two bushes that are fixed up under the rear arches because as far as I know you can't buy poly bushes for them so I ll fit standard Ford rubber bushes this summer.

how did you find it in terms of getting the old bushes out of the arms etc?

I cut mine out.There was one bolt that I had to grind the head off and knock the bolt through as well.

There is 14 bushes in total at the rear,7 each side.

Yep. I know what's in there mate. Good to know. My experience is here that it's not too bad opening bolts on old cars. They don't use salt on the roads over here so that's a big help.

For me the difficult bit was fitting back the rear springs,nightmare.

I've bought an internal spring compressor,so I m going to play around with that on a new spring before I attempt it again in the summer.

In the manual it says the gap(arm to subframe) for the rear spring to sit in ,is 113 mm ,to achieve this a compressor is required.

I wonder if you had lowering Springs would it be any easier...

Interesting!Is fitting a smaller spring in the specified gap(113 mm,) lowering the ride height?

Well that's how they work man. Say 50 mm drop, you should be able to manhandle them in there. Mine will get dropped 50mm or so at some point in the future. I want to get all the bushes sorted out front and rear first then lower it and follow that with some new wheels. I have lots of plans for this thing, If i just had the money to go with them....lol

That's what I ended up doing,botching them in with a mate.it was a lot of faffing around,unless you have a special technique 😉Compressor the way to go for me next time.

Cool. My plan is to see how long I can run it for. It my get me to work motor, it will do about 4k a year. We have a 520d beemer as the main family car for doing long haul work. I'm pretty handy with the spanners. So I'm gonna be doing a few jobs. Last week she got all new discs pads and shoes. New hoses next followed by all new bushes in the back of it. I have it a year now and have done the 4k and I never laid a spanner to it till last weekend. Passed it's last NCT with flying colours and looking at the test sheet she's in perfect order. A small oil leak to sort too. I've become quite attached to the old girl I have to say, and I enjoy driving it more than the beemer if you can believe that. Lol

I've had mine nearly a year. It's just rolled over to 161,000. No mechanical problems at all. MOT'd a couple of weeks ago and failed on a dodgy handbrake. Replaced the cable and it sailed through.

It's not without its problems. The heater resistor pack blew last week, and I also managed to break the fan direction control. The key won't unlock the doors anymore, so it's a strict "Don't lock the doors" policy right now. It could do with a !Removed! good service, but other than a minor service, and a set of tyres, I've done nothing to the car for a year, and it hasn't let me down yet.

There is work that I'd like to do on the car, but I haven't got the money for it. But as far as I'm concerned, it's a good driver. I really like driving it.

Yeah I'm the same. I love driving my mk1. I've got big plans for it. But they will take time to complete

My mk1.5 1.8 tdci had 147k on it when I part ex'ed. Should have kept it longer probably!

1.8 petrol I had before that did 137k and I got rid of that due to the expense, it was sweet as a nut!

Right, i think its safe to say ill get a long time out of the old girl yet then. Thanks everyone for your input.

George

should make a thread for the MK2 also :D, im on 140,500 on my mk2 1.8 tdci

Ive got 166000 on my 2007 focus mk2 1.8tdci ex-police

Our 2000 Focus 1.8 Zetec LX has 183,000 miles on the clock and is still going strong. I fully expect it to exceed 200k and possibly even reach 300k one day...