We journey back to October last year, where Neil‘s Focarse has been rescued from a fiery death, but it’s still not quite right…
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I’m sure some of you noticed that a fire decided to wipe out my daily drive workhorse when I took it on track. These things happen, or at least they happen to me. I took it in my stride but I did decide to punish my Focus by letting it sit in the naughty corner for a while, or what I refer to as ‘dead car alley’ on my drive, where all the broken or wounded cars lay until they are reborn.
On first glance, bar a few sensors and melted wiring, it looked a doddle to sort. I did some very keen bargain hunting and bagged myself a new cam cover, oil cap, ignition leads and wiring loom. I had to go to Ford for the induction hose but all in all it cost me around £100 so I was well pleased, considering all of this is brand new Ford stock.
Getting it looking like an engine and cleaned up again was easy. My lady-shoe wearing housemate Simon helped out with stripping some of the wires back and it was looking good. Fire extinguisher dust really burns though, even more so when you get it in a cut on your hand! When fired up it smoked a little and sounded a bit lumpy but it soon seemed to all settle. Felt like a lucky escape, especially as it could have been so much worse as the fire was crucially near to the fuel lines. I gingerly did some careful testing, which basically involved me cruising around until it was up to temperature and then flooring it. Me putting my foot down would happen sooner or later, so I figured I may as well do it while I was local.
It survived the test, but it did feel incredibly flat low down and to be lacking a touch of power further in the revs. I also traced the horrible knocking I felt towards the end of its death at Anglesey to a knackered gearbox mount. The car was instantly put back into workhorse mode as I had car parts to ferry about and my Mk1 has been in almost non-stop daily use and commuting. Within a week I think I had chalked up 1000 miles on my usual crazy car missions, the only real mishap was losing the gears because the linkage popped off on an aggressive gearchange, thanks to the tired gearbox mount. After getting covered in grease as well as the highly irritating fire extinguisher dust at the roadside, it was back running again.
Besides the obvious burning on my hands from the dust I missed, the car seemed fine. It was returning good mpg too, which was a surprise considering the flat spots. But the question is, will it be alive for another update? You’ll find out soon…
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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xxx
