Fiesta 2003 1.6 Zetec tappets

It is a tricky job, but not one that ever gets done apart from when the head is being rebuilt after belt failure. If the cams are worn enough to be noisy then I would be worried about the rest of the engine. Removing measuring and calculating the shim thicknesses is a real pain to do, and even with the utmost care you can end up with some that are not dead right and then have to go back for more shims. Only rebuilders keep a good stock of the shims, Fords can order them, but even they are problematic, I ordered one size and got another, although the part number was correct!!

er all, it's 12 years old. Looking at my Haynes manual, it seems an odd so rt of job - you need to measure the clearance, see if there are already shi ms in there, and work out what thickness the new ones need to be. If the c ar's not be off the road, this means you're sort of doing the job twice - o nce to do the measuring, and again to do the fitting. Is this normal nowad ays, or is the Fiesta something of a particular pain in this respect? I'd get a recon head, but it would probably cost as much as the car's worth. O r should I just live with the rattle?

I think I'll see if I can do some measuring first. It may be something els e. I can't imagine what else would make that sort of loud ticking noise, t hough.

Take off the auxiliary belt and see if the noise disappears, next inspect the cambelt department, at that age it should have had a belt/tensioners.