I just wanted to share my current Ford dealership saga, I have had a slow leak in my plastic intake by the thermostat housing for a few months, and decided I should go ahead and fix it. In doing research for what parts I would need online I ran across the fact that Ford settled a lawsuit last month and is extending the warranty coverage for this item on 99-01 to 7 years from original warranty start. In the case of my car that means for another 3 months, so I hurried to the local dealership with the Oasis number in hand (FSA 05N04) and was pleasantly surprised with no objections to the assorted basic mods or the fact that I was asking for free warranty work on a 7 year old car with over 120,000 miles on the odometer. This is where the good news ends, and competence is Job #0 begins, I dropped my car off at the dealer yesterday morning around 9 am , the dealer called at around 10 am this morning and said the intake was fixed, but I needed a new $70 hood latch (the same sticking hood latch issue that I had complained about every time the car was in the shop when still under warrenty, that they would only oil or "adjust"). I had someone drop me off to pick up the car while on lunch break today, waited about 10 minutes for it to be pulled around, the first think I noticed there was a greasy black hand print on the white paint of the door, I was in a hurry so I ignored it and started to drive off. I made it about 100 feet when I noticed the hood was not shut completely, so I stopped while still in the dealer not and closed it. I had noticed by this point that the engine did not sound exactly right and was idling a bit rough, I knew the battery had been disconnected as the clock was displaying 5:30 so assumed it may just need a minute or two for the computer to re learn propper idle. I pull out onto the highway and instantly notice just how badly the car was running, missing and sputtering, etc. I made a U turn and went back to the dealership the girl at the service desk called the "mechanic" up to the desk to talk to me. I use the term mechanic loosley as this guy did not look old enough to shave. He went on to tell me that the problem was coolant in the spark plug holes, that he had blown it out as best as possible and it should "boil off" after a few minutes of driving, or I could leave the car there and they would look at it, but it would be monday before they had an open bay. Since I had no ride back to work, and my lunch break had stretched to 1.5 hours at this point I took the car and was thankful that this whole thing had only cost me $1.31 (coolant disposal fee). After about 45 minutes of driving this afternoon the car was still running rough, so while things were slow here at work I stepped away from my desk I borrowed the cheap socket wrench set from the office and went out to the parking lot to diagnose the trouble. With car idling rough I disconnected the coils one at a time until I found one that made no/little differnce in the sound of the engine. I pulled that coil and found the contact inside was covered with unknown brown gunk (maybe the part of coolant that does not boil away, maybe something else ). I scraped it clean with a flat head screw driver (tool choices were limited) replaced it and now the engine is running on all 8 cylinders, although still a little bit rough. My guess is I will be pulling the other 7 coils and cleaning them this weekend, while I am at it I might as well change the spark plugs.
Ike
Ike