Can you believe...
 

Mate of mine has a Y plate Focus Zetec. He's owned it since new. It has NEVER been serviced. It has passed each MOT, aircon still blows cold. The only mechanical fault was a defective heater card. (£15 from Ebay). Its going for its 1st service and MOT this week. It's used daily, short journeys, never washed....Its filthy but straight...Is that a testament to the longevity of the Zetec engine or what? (In case you hadn't worked it out, he has absolutely no interest whatsoever in cars)

Bet the Oil looks GREAT!

Makes me cringe thinking of the suffering of the engine for the sake of £20 a year ........

How many miles has it done ?

I don't understand why people would do this to a car, if he had such disrespect for a it, why buy a brand new car why not save £12k or what ever it cost and buy a cheap shed?.

My daily driver cost £150, yet i still service it and clean it every few weeks.

There is a guy round where I live that owns a y plate M5 but its always s**t high and cover in dings :(

id say hes lucky the zetec engine hates having no oil changes, right down to the point of poor starting posibilitys.

it will prob thow a rod once oil changed pmsl

Lets hope he wants to keep it until it dies as no other fecker will buy it with zero service history!

TX.

yep for twenty five quid its not worth it, give it another year the oil breaks down and the engine will become very very noisy, same thing happend on neighbours 02 focus

aye zetecs are not as reliable as most people think

yah top of the list of priorities when looking at a 7 year old 900 quid car is the full service book.

personnaly i would rather have 12 months mot on a car that age/value.

when we swapped our L plate escort for an MPV Citroen Picasso about 5 years ago The Citroen guy asked me about the Escort........I replied I don't look after the Escort as its a POS !!

It hadn't had ANYTHING done to it apart from me checking the tyres and fluid levels from time to time......Passed all the MOTs too LOL

We'll you're welcome to it fella ...

TX.

PS

Probably worth £2k ;)

2001/Y Ford Focus Hatchback 1.6 Zetec 5d (98) Valuation - Parker's

My daily drive is a pug 106 diesel which cost me 300 notes last may. I MOT'd it in March costing another 240 but I have totalled 20,000 miles in it.

There's a dent in EVERY panel and looks like a heap but its mechanically sound and completly carefree driving.

If it breaks I'll pick up another. great motor.

I LOVE IT!!! see, thats sumthing i would do too, keep it dirtey from outside b'cos im a dirty driver :D

For what it costs, get it serviced as when it lunches its internals, it wont be a sunny day, outside your house, it will be a Welsh mountain road, at 3am in the rain with no mobile reception !

My cousin has an old Rover 214 (well his wife does) dont think thats ever been changed in five years or so, keeps on going dragging its sorry arse round, you can get away with less than the manufacturers recommend if you use good oil and are sympathetic but they do issue the intervals based on sound engineering, apart from more recent cars which have 20k intervals, bit sceptical about that, fleets run them for what 30 years and 80,000 miles at which point you get a car thats been threashed and only had 3 or 4 changes, I think thats more about selling to fleet managers rather than long term good practice.

Sounds like my missus :Suspiciou

Good job that Ford didnt use the cheap rubbish that youve championed, eh?

;)

On the contrary, Oil Filter at £5 and Oil at £15 = £20 ..... thats all that is needed and all that Ford uses.

Kinda enforces my belief that expensive Oil is a waste of money - look what cheap stuff can do!!!! :lol1:

However, this is one case where the use of Fully Synthetic would be of benefit!

Theyll pay much much less than that, but the oil will be much much better.....

Last Zetec I saw that had done approx 40,000miles (80K total) without a service blew a head gasket and had a seized cylinder head.

I used the sludge out the sump to re-fill my grease gun :lol1:

get the online voucher printed off from national tyres and get it done thats absolutely hangin leaving it that long

I agree.

Problem is now, putting fresh oil in it by servicing it, will add fresh detergents.

The fresh oil detergent will break down and loosen the sludge deposits, which will then rapidly block up the oil pick strainer and overwhelm the (new) oil filter. Staving the engine of oil - first part to notice lack of oil is teh cylinder head...noisy tappets being the first sign, and then it won't be long there after where its spin a main or big-end bearing.

Once an engine has gone past the point of no return in regards to lack of care. Servicing it suddenly doesn't make it "good" again, but may make the inevitable engine failure happen even sooner!

Best course of action to prevent this is to remove the sump and clean it out, as well as the oil pick up strainer. Worth the extra labour on a neglected engine.