Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Compression problem

This is an old discussion.

I say the crank. Even a few mm of error will give huge differences in compression.

Go read what Ford and other carmakers recommend in the rest of the world.

Check out bobistheoilguy.com

The have forums for "oil nuts" and are just as passionate about motor oil as folks here are passionate about Contours and Mystiques.

Seems North America goes for these thinner oils like a 5W20 and 5W30 while Europe and Asia and Austraila call for a wider range of oils.

So it wouldn't surprise me to read that Ford recommends 20W50 for the Zetec in Europe, say during the summer.

On an interesting, and somewhat related note, it seems running oil longer intervals between changes DOES NOT result in more engine wear. In fact, there have been a few studies that say as the oil gets older, the wear decreases as indicated by performing oil analysis.

I'll post another topic for discussion, if I can find the article, or the link over at the BITOG site.

It was interesting.

For a very long time, I've been doing Mobil 1 for 6 months or 8-10K miles, whichever comes first.

You can see my oil analysis here:



And all of them are here: http://tlcc2000.dyndns.org/Oil_Analysis

The 2000 MPV is a 2.5L Duratec run almost exactly 6 months and just about exactly 5000 miles.

Ok, I'll stop the hijack and let you go back to the original discussion.

TB

Tick over needs to be high (like 1200) to keep the car from rattling, even then the steering wheel shakes.

On driving the car is very very fussy below 2500 rpm, like it needs to be clutched to do anything.

Above 3000 rpm car revs very smoothly.