She asked about lifters ticking.
You can do something about that, if its not just needing an oil change, its called auto-rx. Its an engine oil desludging tool. You basically pour it in near the end of an oil cycle's life with a new filter. Run it a while, change the oil, use dyno oil (buy some good stuff, valvoline, castrol, something low sulfur) run it short, change it to whatever you want.
You'll probably get some folks who say you can't do that, that it will remove sludge which is actually sealing leaks in the seals of your engine. That is true, it did happen a lot on older cars if you switched to a detergent based oil. If you're already running mobil 1, you're probably ok, as mobil 1 is pretty viscous and seeps out of leaking seals well. I did auto-rx on three cars over 100k miles and had no leaks from any of them. Switched two of them to mobil 1 afterwards and they're fine at 25k+ miles later.
Also, you might try a top end cleaner like seafoam or berrymans. You run it into a vaccum line to decarbon the top of the motor. There are probably instructions here somewhere, but the basic idea is to get the car hot, then using a funnel arrangement, suck about half a can of cleaner into a running motor - you might need a helper, the motor will want to die as it injests the fluid. Kill the engine and let it sit. After about 15 min fire it up and go for a drive. It will belch smoke, this is normal. Run till the smoke clears up. Repeat with the other half of the can.
both of those, in addition to the filter & tire suggestions here should help fuel mileage.
Another thought. I don't now how hard the plugs are on a zetec, but a copper plug which acutally produce a better spark becuase copper is a better conductor of electricty than platinum. Platinum didn't come about to improve performance, rather to enhance life. I didn't read about copper here, haven't researched copper on the zetec/duratec, so there might be something in the ignition system which prevents it, but on the modular cars, which also use an app764 plug (I think, it sounds very familar) , the awsf-32c motorcraft is the best bang for the buck performance wise. Natuarally it has a much shorter life (24k miles vs 100k).
Finally, on Mobil 1, you really should extend your change interval. If you're worried about it, use blackstone or similar to do an oil analysis. On the truck I tow with I can get about 6k miles. On my Lincoln with a DOHC I can get 7500 (I change at 5K cause I'm paranoid). 3k would be pretty low unless you were a taxi in the city doing a lot of idling and short tripping or something.
I agree, Mobil1 is not that much more expensive than conventional when you extend the change interval.
Scott
