Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Dyno and Drag Results of Fords latest oil Problemed Duratecs test

Bicycle, actually there are a lot fewer oil starvation blown engines than many think. Bringing out my trusty Consumer Reports Reliability Ratings (yes Red95SE5spd I do use statistics after I verify their credibility) and guess what, the Contour V6 falls right on average for engine reliability! So does the Mystique V6!

Therefore, the engine is not the trouble spot some think it to be... it's the brakes, exhaust (those cats and O2 sensors showing up), and the electrical systems we need to worry about!

doesn't the duratech, or atleast the SVT engine come with a windage tray.

I think the dry sump idea would work. It has worked for other manufacturers that had oil starvation problems.

if the oil is having a problem returniong to the sump from the heads then obviously the drain holes are not large engough or there are not enough of them. So make the holes bigger. OR

What if we added external lines connecting the valve covers to the oil pan. It would be easy right, just have to remove the valve covers and oil pan first.

they are made of aluminum right, well then we could put aluminum fittings in them and weld in place to secure and seal, then use a steel line down to the oil pan where another set of aluminum fittings can be installed.

This would give the oil a seconday path of gravity return, and by installing the fittings we could in a way control the height of the oil in the head by where we put the fittings, right?

Once that is done someone could do test runs and figure how much oil remains in the heads and then that ammount of oil could then be added to the engine by increasing the size of the oil pan.

Does all this sound practical?

Been hibernat'n...

I had a new aluminum dry sump tank, weaver 3 stage pump, some braided lines, a pickup and a cooler and was having a bracket fabricated for the pump but then I lost my job and ran out of funding. The kit sat there for the longest time but then I had to sell it to pay some bills

You know what, its funny you mention that. The 3L heads acutally has an extra oil return hole at the rear of the head. Which in our FWD cars thats on the left side of the engine bay. Maybe having two oil return holes as opposed to one might help on those right hand turns.

Here is a pic of what I'm taking about..
http://computeractions.com/davescontour/3L/3L%20head%20on%20bottom2.jpg

Bnoon mentioned he saw some metal lips in the return holes..... maybe that's the problem... maybe it's a manufacturing problem...

what i'm trying to get to is NOT EVERYONE experiences this problem... maybe a certain line worker or a certain mold is not made properly and some engines are getting these metal lips in the return holes and THIS is causing the starvation problems.

Let's remember Cosworth designed these engines, Ford inherited them and just mass produced them, i'm willing to bet Ford made some bad molds, and they ended up in some 'tours... no Cougars have ever experienced this (from what I know) but we also are newer,

Is it only the older 'tours who are suffering from oil starvation?

if so then Ford obviously found the flaw (prolly a bad mold) and fixed it...

Do we know how old the engine was that Roush tested? cause I can assure you the 2001 Duratec 2.5 is different then the 2000 and younger Duratec 2.5....

so before we go jumping that ALL DURATECS SUFFER let's examine this statement a little deeper.

"Let's remember Cosworth designed these engines"

Actually, I think it was Porsche but point taken. Interesting about the extra return on the 3L. And it always has seemed odd why some motors fail & others do not despite very abusive treatment, so perhaps some aspect of engine to engine variation is contributing. And making this even more confusing is the crankshaft harmonics issue - which is a different way to the same end - spun bearings & broken rods. BTW, this may be one reason the Cougars have been spared problems as the have the newer dual mode damper (though Terry said starting in Aug01, which would not explain why earlier cars had fewer failures).

Has anyone looked into when the blown engines were built? What time span. From the looks of things the majority of blown 2.5L's are in mid run 99 to early '00 before the displacement & C/R change.

Granted there are probably a few engines that fall outside of those lines, but look at the majority of them. My guess is somethign was out of spec during a specific run of engines and this is the result.

Also The Duratec was designed by Porsche. Here are a couple pics of the original engine (Courtesy of HMSi):



-Mark

"From the looks of things the majority of blown 2.5L's are in mid run 99 to early '00 before the displacement & C/R change."

The first 7 that I was keeping track of a year ago were all E0s & I thought that might be the common denominator. But it seems now pretty much any year. Except none reported on the Cougar forum...

Bad boy Mark,from my 'stock' of Porsche pics eh...copyright buddy To the problem at hand ,each head as two drain passages,when the enter the block they 'Y' into one which drains through the main bearing girdle to the pan.I set up two heads to try & see how many qts of oil the heads retain,most of it runs out real quick BUT the area of the c/case baffle(in the valley) has a VERY large area,this connects behind the t/chain tensioners and two dains next to each of the cylinder bores,almost forgot,on the heads there are also drains each side at the front that drain back around the chain area.I think drilling & tapping the pan with 90deg unions and clear plastic ,'level' tube is the only way to prove this out,looking at the heads etc it seems hard for that amount of oil to stay there....FWIW !