Hi John Ok you have the answer I suspect, 94k km is about 60k miles and in my experience cross flows because of their design tend to start having issues at about 50-60k. Remember they are not like a modern efficient engine. If the stems are hardened and valve guides worn with blueish smoke on start and idle oil is being drawn into the chambers and will not all be burnt and then the leftovers will harden and coat the valves and seats and once hot will create the overrun and glo- plug and then the overrun. This will be made worse by the use of unleaded even with additive I am afraid. Ultimately the valve seats will be burnt away and loss of power or even starting trouble will come about.
Try the sparks plugs but I suspect it will not cure it or will be temporary. The best solution is head off, either replace or refurbish with new seats and valves. You could take this as an opportunity to convert to unleaded in either case and possibly go to a stage 2 head to get better performance, don't go to far with the tuning or you will stress the bottom end that has already done 60k and will also need to have carb. Changes. There are loads of articles about 1600 cross flow tuning around. If you take the head off then measure the piston bore to check if they are starting to wear oval, if they are, which is common, then piston wear and piston ring wear may also be contributing and you may need to consider this, which would mean a rebore and new pistons/rings. I know this is not a great scenario, but having learnt the hard way with these engines in Cortinas and early Escorts in my teens and early twenties I am pretty sure of what I say. My best friend was a Ford mechanic in those days and we were forever swapping cylinder heads and engines trying to get more power and tuning them. The problem you have developing is due to the engine design I am afraid. I hope this helps, and is not too costly to fix. Regards, Adrian Sent from my iPad On 8 Jul 2012, at 03:54, John Mott <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks Adrian > > The motor has only done 94000 kilometres and has never had the head off. > It does tend to blow a little blue smoke when taking off after sitting > idling, and I suspect that this is caused by hardened valve stem guides. > It does not use any significant amount of oil between annual (3000Km) oil > changes. > > My spare time has been overtaken by gardening necessities, but I will get > around to fitting new plugs in the next couple of days. > > Regards > John > > > At 07:28 AM 7/07/2012 +0100, you wrote: >> Hi >> >> Having had experience of cross flows in Ford's, by your description it could >> be the timing is out, but if this was the case then I would have expected it >> to be running hot and a loss of power/ performance. it is more likely that >> the plugs/valves have baked hard deposits on them due to it not being >> converted to un-leaded and these are turning into glo-plugs that ignite the >> fuel. >> >> If plugs have signs of heavy deposits baked on then try new ones that are >> designed to get hotter. If this does not do the trick it is head off and >> inspect the valves and take it from there. You do not say how many miles the >> engine has done, do you get a blueish exhaust when cold, how much oil do you >> use every, if so and it has done 80k plus miles then you may have worn oil >> seal rings that are causing deposit build up on the valves. Sometimes on >> lower mileages this can occur if the car has done lots of short journeys and >> never gets warm up properly. >> >> Hopefully it will just be the plugs. >> >> Regards, >> >> Adrian > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > View posts on The Mail Archive > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > [http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/] > > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- View posts on The Mail Archive http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ [http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/] Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=22459785&id_secret=22459785-4a39ddf8 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
