95 escort 1.9 help please

car wouldnt start...did not crank normally...but sounded like it needed timing belt...changed the timing belt and water pump (suspected water pump because of frequent having to refill antifreeze)...after changing everything sounded the same with no start....pulled the plugs and found cylinder on driver side of car had burnt plug looking greenish(plugs were new 2 months ago....other three plugs were normal....now I am thinking head gasket but had other cars with head gasket problems and they cranked and started normally with fast overheating, etc....is this possibly a bad cylinder or what is called not enough compression to start....have seen this in books but never had this experience before......please point me in the right direction, thanks

Reply to
Peter Gennuso
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Take a compression test of all four cylinders. My '94 idled in a similar manner then developed a BIG problem; the intake valve seat on no.4 cylinder broke apart into 1/32" pieces and fell out causing damage to the piston and intake valve. Some particles then went back through the intake plenum and attacked the no.2 cylinder piston and intake valve. A precursor to the problem was a ticking sound, the same as a fuel injector cycling. I used a stethoscpe to try and isolate the sound and could only determine that an injector was going bad. Instead it was the seat ticking when the valve closed. I sure learned some things!

Another possible way to isolate that this could be the problem is to go to a shop that has a mechanic's boroscope. Then he could view the inside of the cylinders, without taking the head off, by putting the probe through the spark plug hole.

The machine shop that did the work on the head (shaving it, putting new seats in, valve job, ect.), after I took it off, had a engine service computer program that told them specific problems for various brands of engines. It said that the 91-96 Escorts with the 1.9 had this problem and gave the fix

procedure. It also said that Ford did not make any sort of recalls for the problem. And apparently a lot of Escorts have had this problem because they said that they have fixed quite a few in the 70k-80K mileage range.

Take the compressi> car wouldnt start...did not crank normally...but sounded like it needed

Reply to
dmtaurus

the problem. And apparently a lot of Escorts have had this problem because they said that they have fixed quite a few in the 70k-80K mileage range.

If you search the internet you will lots of bitching and moaning about this problem. However, mine threw a rod at around that mileage.

Reply to
Childfree Scott

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