Fords - wet belts & ecoboosts?

B0bbyEwing

Very likely will be in the market for a new car. By new I mean new to us. £3k will likely be the very top of the budget but wouldn't want to be spending that if we can help it.

Wife has seen a number of Fiesta's & Focus' she was interested in but we've been warned against anything with wet belts & ecoboost engines by more than 1 person we know.
Add to that when you hop online (social media comments sections) & it just seems to be horror response after horror response with Ecoboost being referred to as EcoBOOM (har-de-har-har). 

We were told that these cars "start going wrong" about the 80k marker. Hop on the sales pages & of all these Fords we were looking at ... pretty much 99% of them were in and about the 80k marker. 

The 'new' car doesn't have to be a Ford. Have also been looking at Honda Civic's for example, Vauxhall Astra's. Golf's could be a bit out of budget really - people want too much money for what they are. I'm just here asking about the Ford because 1) a lot come up in the sales and 2) all the horror stories & warnings we've had about them.

Scaremongering or is there sound reasoning behind it?

I get that any car will have its own issues. Especially at such a budget. I'm just looking to avoid one that may automatically start with more issues than most.

Northern_Wanderer

I've watched a lot of youtunes with car pro's not having anything good to say about ecoboom engines.

Is £3k a realistic budget for what you want? Used cars are phenominally costly now. Plenty of youtunes with good buys for certain budgets.....

B0bbyEwing

What do you mean with youtunes? 

Yes I think £3k is a realistic budget. I don't think there's a need to spend £20k on a car personally. 

But I do agree that people these days seem to expect top dollar for scrap quality. It's been 5 years since I bought a car & it's certainly changed in that time. 

daveyjp

For £3k the badge isn't that important, but Far East brands are generally well built and mechanically simple and reliable, just check MOTs for any issues with corrosion.  You may be better trawling private ads and see what is out there as £3k doesn't get much from a dealer these days.

I'd avois diesels and small turbo engines.  Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Suzuki, Honda would be where my searches would start.

forgotmyname

£3k now seems to get you something that was sub £1500 pre-covid.  Not helped by the massive
price hikes from many manufacturers.   Much of that increase in my opinion is to offset the costs
of electric cars, using petrol/diesel cars to subsidise the cost of building electrical vehicles.

Cheapest Sandero was £6k?  Now you get the painted bumpers and a few cheaper options included
but its £13k.  That's some increase in 4 years.

fatbelly

There was discussion on the bangernomics thread whether the threshold for a banger should now be 3k.

You can still get a good car for 3k

I would definitely consider Focuses with the 1.6 engine, or Fiestas with 1.25 or 1.4

It's the ecoboost 1.0 that has the tricky wet belt, which is £1000+ to change. If your 80k Fiesta/Focus has had the work done there should be no problem provided you use the proper oil and service regularly

B0bbyEwing

Apologies I thought my question was clear but I guess not - my fault. I'm not asking for car suggestions. I'm sure those who like to thread dig will link up & show I asked that within the past few months. 

Since that we looked at sorting the car. Going to send through MOT with view to repair but still looking in the meantime, although not aggressively. 

My question was actually specifically about Ford's & whether we should rule them out of a search based on the horror stories we've heard & warnings from others we've been given. Not sure if it's actually as bad as what people suggest or not. 

Obviously if I was buying a brand new car on 0 miles then it's a different story - hence I stated my budget. 

JGB1955

As long as the belt has been changed (I had my Fiesta done earlier this year, at 9 years old) I wouldn't anticipate it causing a problem.

Goudy

It's bad if your car's wet belt breaks up and fails.

These belts do have a service life which is meant to be 10 years or 150k but almost everyone recommends 8 years or 80k these days.
It's also an expensive job to change a belt on these, likely half your budget again and most owners are savvy to the issue. They tend to move them on before forking out for the job as spending £1500 on a £3000 car doesn't make much sense.

Ford obviously sold a lot of cars with this engine design, so a lot of problems get reported and unsurprisingly those without problems don't often report that.

This makes it hard to judge if one is really worth the risk but as others have said, there are alternatives, like the 1.25 or the 1.6 which tend to be considered more reliable in the timing belt department, likely because owners don't swerve the change as the cost is less.

Your budget is obviously throwing up cars that probably need some sort of belt attention due to age/mileage, wet or dry.
You might get lucky and find a car that's already been done, but the pool to choose from will be quite small.

Personally, if I could find a car with 80k or so on it in otherwise good condition with a very good service history and within budget, I might chance it but know it's still a risk and if anything did happen, I would just scrap it.
If I got three or four years out of it and flogged it on for a grand, I'd count that as a big success.

I did a favour for a neighbour recently and serviced their Focus 1.0 Ecoboost.
It was in good condition overall with just short of 130k on the original wet belt and they had no plans to change the belt. They seem to have the attitude the car doesn't owe them anything anymore. It does a job and when it doesn't, they'll get another that does.

I did notice the expansion bottle had a crack, but that's common on a lot of Fords and a cheap and simple fix.
I plan to swap it over at the weekend and flush the coolant.

WellKnownSid

forgotmyname said:

£3k now seems to get you something that was sub £1500 pre-covid.  Not helped by the massive
price hikes from many manufacturers.   Much of that increase in my opinion is to offset the costs
of electric cars, using petrol/diesel cars to subsidise the cost of building electrical vehicles.

Cheapest Sandero was £6k?  Now you get the painted bumpers and a few cheaper options included
but its £13k.  That's some increase in 4 years.

The cheapest Sandero was £6k about 14 years ago.

The current Sandero is just short of £15k but has a direct injection turbocharged engine that you'll also find in the latest Mercedes cars, whereas your £6k car had the 1.2 four pot from a 1990's Twingo.

The £6k car also missed out on all the driver assistance features required in current cars.  In my opinion one of the best improvements has been the move to LED headlights across the range - they provide astonishing night time performance.  That and being able to tell your tyre pressures whilst driving along.

The Spring EV is only £200 more than the base Sandero so I don't think there was been much offsetting of costs.  I was in the Renault (City K ZE) version when I got a taxi in South America last year - great little car.

For a £3k budget I wouldn't ignore older Fords - the previous generation of petrol and diesel engines weren't particularly efficient but they were fairly bulletproof.  The cam belt on the 2 litre diesel just requires a couple of hours on the drive, IIRC you don't even have to remove the crank pulley.  In something like a Kuga you get a reasonable amount of working space too.  Even on the 1.25 / 1.4 / 1.6 petrols it's easy by modern standards - and all three petrol engines use the same timing kit (you'll need the one with the VVT spider to cover all variants).

Goudy

Yes, the older second gen (B52) Sandero could be had with the old 4 pot D4F/D7F 16v 1.2 engine, the  K9K 1.5 diesel and the 0.9 H4Bt 3 pot turbo.

Later cars could be spec'd with the 1.0 B4D bi fuel engine.

I had a Sandero with the 0.9 H4Bt engine for a short time and I've driven cars with that engine before and since in Clio's and Micra's.
I have to admit, in the Sandero it did feel like the engine was in the cabin with you. There wasn't much sound deadening in the fire wall unlike the Clio and the Mirca.

I did wish I bought the 1.5 DCi I test drove before I bought the 0.9.
Ok it's just as noisy but it's a peach of an engine and really suits the Sandero.