An intriguing update will end this post, but first this. It was hard to take what I heard -- not because of how you said it, bnoon, but because of how much of an idiot I felt like after reading the truth. Not that this group needs to know, but I haven't sleep for anything the last couple nights. I'm a wreck. I can't stop obsessing about it. The past two years have not been good financially for me, and a new/rebuilt/used engine is not in my budget, yet I see no other choice. I try to be so careful with my car, take as good of care as I can with it so it will last as long as possible. I know I'm not alone there. It just kills me -- all those signs were there bnoon: temp. gauge spiking, no hot air blowing in heat or defrost mode, engine pinging up hill. I know it sounds stupid to say now, but I would think that if an engine is overheating you'd have an abundance of heat from wherever it could escape (e.g., the heater).
Update: My poor, abused car was towed to the dealership yesterday. I spoke with the service manager on my lunch break to get an update, see if the insurance field rep. had been by to check things out. The manager said to me very quickly, "oh, yeah, your wiring harness had a short." I said, "oh, I didn't expect to hear that." He replied, "and it's covered by a special Ford program for 10 years or 100K miles." So, the parts have been ordered, and he's confident that everything will be fine/covered. Well, I know now that it's not going to be fine once the mechanic gets to disassembling and finding more problems. Right now, all they are going by is what they can obviously see, which led the service manager to think wiring short. I said to him, "I'm concerned because there's a fluid leak (I've got quite a puddle in my driveway) and the coolant in the reservoir was drawn to almost empty." "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it" was his response.
If I'm lucky the wiring harness will be covered by the Ford program, even though it seems unlikely that it did short, but once they learn the water pump went belly up, if that's the cause of the overheating, I'm on my own for the rest of the major engine damage. I know I'll have to get it towed to another shop -- I'm certain I can't afford the dealer's cost to replace the engine. Thoughts?
Bnoon and Buckshot: Thanks for the engine swap advice/offers. I know nothing about the 3.0 swap idea, but I'll search the forums for more info, even though I imagine my checkbook won't allow it. And an SVT engine would be a swell addition, but I imagine my checkbook won't allow for that either. I've got some work ahead of me to learn what rebuilt/used 2.5s go for. I really don't have a clue what kind of price tag I'm looking at. So, yes, bnoon, 2.5 leads are welcome. Thanks. If only I could do it all over again .... Well, I do have one thing to be thankful for in all this nightmare and that's this forum. I appreciate you all taking the time to read and respond.
