larry moe 'n curly wrote:

> A person at work has a 1.8L Mazda Protege with slightly under 300,000
> miles, no engine work. I don't see any blue smoke or smell
> hydrocarbons from it.

Ironically, these engines will burn oil eventually if you don't keep up
the oil changes with regularity. This is commonly pointed out by
import haters, but not a problem if you change your oil 4 times a year.
These folks seem to prefer headgasket, cooling system, and lower
engine failures every 100k to 150k because they save money on oil
changes.

> My 1.9L has less than 75K. How soon can I expect trouble with it? I
> read that Ford had redesigned the block to fix head gasket failures
> before the Ford/Mazda Escort was introduced in 1991, so if it still has
> head problems, it must have been absolutely awful in the earlier years.
> OTOH Ford also managed to cut 3 HP, despite introducing the welded
> tubing intake manifold, so maybe I shouldn't expect much.

You said you drive it very gingerly, correct? If you don't run it like
the average commuter driver, then you probably won't see the typical
valve seat cracking/dropping problems that plague this engine. You can
still expect premature waterpump leaks/failure, premature radiator
leaks, oddball EFI and MIL problems, junk lifters, overheating and
cooling fan/relay/circuit problems, etc. And that's just the
engine-related stuff. I'm not a fan of the Escort, but did cut my
teeth on them as a kid learning to fix cars, so they served a purpose
for me.

I've told my two current Escort customers to get rid of their cars
around 100,000 miles or before their second timing belt. They can get
expensive to keep, unless you want to stack up reams of nagging
problems and drive it into the ground. The 'little' problems these
things typically amass are the kinds of problems that accelerate major
breakdowns.

Toyota MDT in MO