Engine Swap

[Rustydog01]

A topic that has probably been done to death,but having just moved & our restoration project is in our barn in West Wales , starting to think about what engine to use. I Have a lot of experience with the "A" series having raced minis for years & own a highly modified 1972 mini.

The venerable "A" series in 1275 format is simple, reliable & good for reasonable power looks reasonable original but the costs are high to get good power now.

So I was thinking of Ford Duratec/Zetec or the K series , which will all fit with some modifications

or has anybody done a moggy with the 3 cylinder Ford engine ? no doubt there will be an adapter plate to a Ford type 9 gearbox, Its a small engine which can produce more than enough power, as we want to end up with a classic car that will keep up with traffic, and will be reliable .

Anybody got any thoughts or experience with the 3 cylinder engine.

[oliver90owner]

Is this the ford 3 cylinder with wet timing belt? No experience, but reports say prone to failure big time. If it is, it is one to avoid like the plague!

[Rustydog01]

Good point, as these engines are coming upto to 10 years old in theory the belt should be ok for 10 years but they are failing prematurely most likely due to wrong oil being used, but it's not a big issue to change the belt with engine on the bench, any engine that I would use I would give a freshen up belts/chains pumps etc.

[philipkearney]

I don't know anything about the car but there's a convertible currently for sale on eBay with 2.0 zetec conversion. May be worth asking for more details and photos?

IMG_0070.PNG (3.42 MiB) Viewed 1839 times

[oliver90owner]

Good point, as these engines are coming upto to 10 years old in theory the belt should be ok for 10 years but they are failing prematurely most likely due to wrong oil being used, but it's not a big issue to change the belt with engine on the bench, any engine that I would use I would give a freshen up belts/chains pumps etc.

It’s not only the belt finally failing - even if it does. The oil pick-up to the pump has a screen which quite easily gets blocked with debris from fairly young belts. I have been reading one recent report of engine seizure due to lack of lube at 45k miles. Fellow was right jarred off with it!

[kevin s]

It is down to the oil, if you don't use the correct Ford oil with the correct addative pack the belts get damaged, most of the other oils which claim to be equivalent aren't.

I've had around a dozen ecoboost fiestas as company cars and the engine is brilliant, we've had ecoboost connects to over 200,000 miles with no problems as well.

That said I wouldn't buy a secondhand one without a full main dealer service history.

would be an expensive engine to retrofit though direct injection engine management systems are not cheap to buy or set up.

[oliver90owner]

I've had around a dozen ecoboost fiestas as company cars and the engine is brilliant, we've had ecoboost connects to over 200,000 miles with no problems as well.

That does not actually tell me anything, without some considerable clarification. Are you telling us that individual cars have covered over 200k miles, or that the dozen have covered 200k miles (only a few thousand miles, on average) without trouble.

The 200k miles/car does not have any particular credence, unless we know the true belt-change intervals which applied to those engines.

Personally, I would not touch one of those engines, with a barge pole, as a replacement in any car. That is my own cautious opinionated approach to this matter. I am guessing you are a ‘ford’ man, be it a user, owner, fleet mechanic, or ford company/dealership employee. I’ve no particular dislike of the brand ( I have owned several), only to the particular faults that have arisen on several marques and models - so not only fords.

[kevin s]

to clarify

we had a fleet of around 10 connect vans they did between 100k and 250k miles over 3 years on their originsl engines, all serviced with ford products to the ford service schedule.

for the company cars they each do around 10 k miles but I was referring here to how well they drive not the durability though my sister still has the first one which has done well over 100k miles including teaching her 3 kids to drive.


There was a couple of issues on early focuses mainly where cooling hoses chaffed through and caused overheating, this is where a lot of the bad reputation comes from, because of the exhaust manifold cast in the head they won't tolerate overheating, on the later ones they added a additional sensor to measure cylinder head temperature which virtially eliminates this issue.

All in all it's like the first cars with alloy heads.
if you don't service them properly they will fail.