Fix or scrap. 2001 escort.

so I bought an 01 escort with a "blown headgasket" for $350 to help out a young friend who just got his license. I had him help me pull the head yesterday and it turns out a valve seat came apart and mashed the piston and chamber in #3.

Im temted to just drop it off at the scrap yard to cut my losses. The motors seem to be rare in salvage yards around here so id have to drive 250 miles and pay $700 for a longblock. Not worth it!

I can get a rebuilt head from headsonly for $250. Any chance I could run a dingleberry hone through #3 and replace the one piston and rod? The cylinder walls seem untouched.

Maybe I should just quit...

I'm surprised that a 2.0L zetec is running that much. How is the rest of the car?

It's an spi, so maybe even more surprising? The car is dirty but quite nice. It has 160k on it. I doubt it would be worth more than $1500 running though.

The 2.0 spi does have a rep for dropping valves. Maybe that's why junkyard engines are hard to find.

You're in this deep, might as well try it. Reman head and one piston. If you get 15K miles and it blows up again you broke even.

Can you find a ZTEC to swap in?

Those Escorts can be real sleepers- look quite ordinary, but handle remarkably well.

In my opinion, your time is worth something. your fuel to retrieve the "new" engine is worth something. The car being worth 1500 or so on a good day, means you'll be well over its value in effort and parts. I'd part out anything valuable and scrap it.

Yes, you can put in a Zetec. Easy button is to find a running ZX2 donor car and drop in the whole subframe.

Eh, I don't really want to do an engine swap. I think this car's going to be scrapped. Pity the price of scrap steel is pretty low right now.

Is the piston actually broken? If it's just ugly i'd leave it in there and run it. As said, if it runs for even 5k miles you got your value out of it. Its not like a high compression engine running on the ragged edge of timing advance and any surface irregularities in the chamber area will send you into rod-shattering detonation. berkeley it.

BlueInGreen44 wrote: The 2.0 spi does have a rep for dropping valves. Maybe that's why junkyard engines are hard to find.

About four-five years ago, a local salvage yard was selling the SPIs for $1200, if they could get any. They were selling Zetecs with wiring harness and computer for $600 as a replacement for blown SPIs, since the Zetecs never die.

I would not get an SPI longblock. Get a complete engine. If you reuse the intake manifold, you will kill the new longblock. It is guaranteed that there is debris in the manifold, and as proof you can look and find debris in the cylinders that didn't drop the exhaust seat.

Weird that it was #3. It's almost always #4.

In reply to Vigo:

I guess that possibility never crossed my mind. It's pretty ghetto bit just may be the ticket. There are pieces of the seat embedded in the piston. I guess I could just use a sanding disc to clean it up as much as possible and throw a remanned head on.

I'll blow the intake manifold out in case there's some debris.

In reply to 2002maniac:

"Blowing it out" would be difficult, the particles of stuff get embedded in the carbon in the manifold. The Focus manifold (down and up) is impossible to clean out due to its shape. The Escort manifold, if it's the one I am thinking of with the side mounted throttle body, maybe could be able to be cleaned out if you have a lot of patience, a few cans of carb cleaner, and various large bottle brushes. Maybe drop it in a bucket of gasoline or kerosene for a few days to soften up the carbon first.

I've been called cheap on this forum because I've reused MLS head gaskets and TTY bolts, but I'd sooner suck it up and buy a new manifold than try to clean out an old one that had been attached to a catastrophic engine failure.

Every split port Ford engine ever made failed or will fail by dropping a valve seat, bending the valve and cracking a piston. That's why there are no cores or good engines in the yards. Any used or rebuilt head will be a ticking timebomb because they all have the same weak point.

IMO, the zetec swap is the only thing that makes sense, and only if you can get the parts at the right price.