From: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly)
Organization: The Man With Ten Cats
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 05:17:42 GMT
Reply-To: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly)

In article <1du9keINNrc5@rave.larc.nasa.gov> kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Dorsey) writes:
>In article <9211111348.01@rmkhome.UUCP> rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes:
>>In article <1dpkekINNkf9@rave.larc.nasa.gov> kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Dorsey) writes:
>>>>been most unimpressed.  The first, the thankfully discontinued SL-PJ11,
>>>>[stuff deleted]
>>>>It's the most frustrated I've been since I owned a Ford Escort.
>>>
>>>Hey, the Escort gets bad press, but it's not all that awful.  All you have
>>>to do is replace the cylinder head every 25,000 miles.  Oh yes, and make
>>>sure you have both metric and standard tools....
>>
>>
>>I know a woman who has a 1984 Escort wagon with >100k miles.  Her maintenance
>>has been oil changes, tuneups, and one brake job.
>
>A friend of mine bought a 1982 Escort.  For those of you who don't know, th
>Escort has an engine designed and constructed by Renault, which has no valve
>clearance to speak of.  This means that when the engine loses timing, the
>pistons come up and smack the valves, causing the valves to bend and possibly
>the pistons to crack.  Now, this in itself is bad, except that the timing
>belt is very undersized for the amount of torque that it has to carry.
>
>Now, this friend of mine had a bit of trouble.  At about 10,000 miles, the 
>timing belt broke, and the valves were destroyed.  The Ford dealer replaced
>the entire cylinder head for free, considering that the belt is supposed to
>be replaced only every 50,000 miles.  However, at the 45,000 mile mark, the
>belt broke again, and Ford would not repair it.
>
>So, he gave the car to me, since I was driving a '72 Toyota at the time.  I
>replaced the valves and remachined the head.  I couldn't get a new head.
>When I called up junkyards, they all had '82 Escorts on the lot, but none
>of them had good cylinder heads on them.  I should have viewed this as a
>warning.
>
>I got about 10,000 miles on the car (which is about two to three month's
>driving for me; I live out in the boonies and it's a bit of a drive to
>get into work).  Then, the timing belt broke.  I wasn't going to fix it
>again.  I went back to my '72 Toyota (which I continued to drive until
>its crankshaft broke in 1991... it had 298,000 miles on it at the time).
>I gave the Escort to a friend of mine who is a professional mechanic.
>
>He replaced the head, and gave the car to his daughter to drive to and from
>school.  She got only about 6,000 miles on the thing until... you guessed it...
>and then he towed it back to my place and left it in my driveway.
>
>I should also point out that there are three bolts holding the water pump
>to the side of the engine.  Two of them are metric.  One of them is not.
>I don't have a clue why this is the case.

My SO bought a 1985 and 1/2 Escort (1.9 liter) in December of 1985.  Late
in the fall of 1986 she said "This car sucks!", and went out and bought a
Dodge Shadow Turbo.  She never had any problem with the Escort, she just
thought it was anemic.

A friend of mine bought a new Hyundai and rode it into the ground in one
year.  He said it was the most boring and worthless car that he ever owned.

NOTE:  "into the ground" == towed to the junkyard.

-- 

Rick Kelly	rmk@rmkhome.UUCP	unixland!rmkhome!rmk	rmk@frog.UUCP
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre