I\'ve recently bought a second hand Escort 16V 1.6 Auto Ghia (thankfully, it\'s the Zetec-E version, so the gearbox hopefully won\'t pack up on me).
It\'s a \'96, done 39K, and been regularly serviced (stamped up roughly every 6-7K), and in very good cosmetic condition, having been previously owned by oldies down in Worthing.
1) The thing my girlfriend noticed right off the bat was the fact that there\'s a wheel bearing/fanbelt slipping sound between 20 and 35mph (1.5K - 2K revs). This is probably where 90% of the cars life has been spent. I\'ve seen another post here that indicates this sound could be down to worn engine mountings, but the sound doesn\'t occur when stationary and straining against the brakes. Any thoughts on this would be very welcome as I\'d like to get it sorted out while still under warranty (and before my girlfriend gets so wound up at the sound that she drives the thing off a cliff!)
2) I know that automatics (and particularly CTX) aren\'t particularly zippy, but there doesn\'t seem to be an awful lot of power behind the kick-down acceleration. When I put the boot down, there\'s about a 1 second pause for throught before the car rather sedately takes off. Having said that, it\'ll happily bomb along doing a ton (once it gets there). Is this typical of CTX gearboxes?
3) Just the other day, one end of the spoiler suddenly popped upward. The nuts are still in place (in the spoiler leg), it appears that the boot lid at that point has rusted through in a little hole. What\'s the best way of repairing this? I was thinking of aralditing (or spot welding if I can find one) a back plate on the underneath of the boot and putting the bolts back through (onto bigger washers).
Other than that, I love the car. Beats the heck out of my old Tipo!!
Many thanks.
Pete.
|
