Posted: 8/23/2014 5:29:05 PM EDT
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anyone here had a "i'm just fine, no wait, i'm scrap" experience with a car?
.my mother parked her car at BK, running fine, came out, started it and it dropped a valve seat. (2.0L SOHC) (btw, not a unknown occurrence to everyone but me: "Valve seat failure[edit] The most common problem with the CVH is the tendency to drop a valve seat,[2] which most often happens in the 2000-2004 Ford Focus with the 2.0L CVH/SPI SOHC engine. This problem is also seen in 1991-2002 Ford Escorts. These engines usually drop a valve seat with no warning, even if the engine has been well maintained. In most cases, a seat drops on the number 4 cylinder, with the next most common being the number 2 cylinder (this peculiarity may have something to do with the engines secondary harmonics) . With the factory valve seats, the typical life of the 2.0L SPI in a Focus is about 100-120k miles,[3] but it can happen as early as 70k miles. When the valve seat drops out of the cylinder head, it falls into the cylinder and damages the piston andcylinder head. In some cases, the valve seat is drawn from its cylinder through the intake manifold into another cylinder until it is obliterated. A valve seat dropping into the cylinder can scar the cylinder wall and bend the piston connecting rods") our 2001 Focus had 106k.. next time you see a Focus on the street,(or on a car lot) just think of that clock ticking under the hood. sold it for $250 and moved on. went from bought new, decent daily driver to crusher literally in 5 seconds. this isn't ours, its a google image (lots to choose from). 
the valve doesn't break, the seat under the valve breaks out of the aluminum head. |
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I used to run a small fleet of trucks, we had a Chevy half ton that was a problem child, it was always something with that stinking truck, I didn't normally drive one of the trucks, but one evening I just happened to be driving that one. I stopped at a local cafe for dinner, truck was running fine, came out, started the truck, and a few seconds later it dropped a valve. I'm glad I was driving it when it happened, if the normal driver for that truck was driving it I was bound to think he had done something to cause it, but he wasn't driving it and I wasn't doing anything unusual except for the fact I was driving a truck I normally didn't. We normally kept the trucks till they were well past 100,000 miles but this truck was such a pain in the ass I traded it off after a couple of years at about 45,000 miles. I got into the truck to drive it less than 3 miles to the dealer to drop it off and pick up a new truck, the truck was fine when I left the office, but it couldn't even last those last 3 miles, halfway there the heater core blew out, I pulled into the dealer with the windows down and steam pouring out the windows! It wouldn't leave without one last slap in my face, and we had to end up paying to have the heater core replaced on a truck we were trading off, that Chevy truck was a piece of crap, it was a lemon, I didn't want to buy another GM truck after that experience but the deal offered by the GMC dealer was so much cheaper, I traded the Chevy on a GMC, what are the chances of getting 2 lemons in a row? It turns out to be 100%, that damn GMC was just as much a lemon as the Chevy before it, I eventually learned my lesson and quit buying GM trucks, too many problems in commercial service! |