This Ford Fiesta Ecoboost was recovered into us after the customer noticed his oil warning light was staying on whilst the car was still running.
When we got the car into the workshop we always like to give them a quick start just to see if there are any other faults we need to look at whilst stripping it down.
In this case we noticed there was no vacuum assistance for the brakes and after a quick look at the vacuum pump i t became apparent there was a problem.
So, what caused this Vacuum pump to fail?
The rubber debris from the failing wetbelt had traveled through the oil galleries and managed to block the little gauze filter going into the vacuum pump causing it to starve itself of oil.
The engine oil in this particular engine had not been changed regularly and possibly not even been the correct specification oil.
Once we had carried out our wetbelt replacement process which in this case included a new oil pump and replaced the vacuum pump the car ran perfect.
We have recommended the customer has another oil change within 2000 miles just to ensure any rubber particles which we couldn’t remove will be flushed through the system and then removed.
The early EcoBoost engine has definitely got a following but probably for the wrong reason so is the later EcoBoost engine any better?
Well, yes and no, Ford have made a few changes to the engine the main one being a new oil pump.
The new oil pump is a bigger unit which incorporates a balance shaft to reduce vibration.
And the oil pump drive belt now has a tensioner instead of being a push fit.
Are they more reliable?
Again like the earlier engines if they are well serviced using the correct oil they are fine.
If on the other hand you miss your service intervals or use the incorrect oil you will have problems!
Ford haven’t really done anything to prevent the rubber debris caused by the degrading belts from blocking the oil pump and starving the engines of oil.
This particular 2018 Fiesta Ecoboost with only 30,000 miles on it was brought into us because of a lack of power and the engine being noisy.
As you can see the wetbelt is in very poor condition and was breaking up.
Because bits of rubber had blocked the oil pump it caused the turbo to fail due to oil starvation.
Once all necessary parts had been replaced the car ran as sweet as a nut.
These problems could have been avoided if the car had been serviced properly and the correct oil had been used.
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For more information on Ford EcoBoost wetbelt replacements please call us on 01332 205070 or email us at info@aaronsautos.co.uk
It is becoming very apparent to us that most of the low mileage wetbelt failures on the Ford Ecoboost and Peugeot engines are caused by poor service intervals and incorrect oil.
Garages are using the correct grade of oil but not with the correct additives (specification) which instead of prolonging the life of the wetbelt is actually causing it to fail prematurely.
We urge anyone who has a car with a wetbelt to check with their manufacturer to see exactly what grade and specification oil is required and make sure their garage is using it, it may cost more in the short term but I can guarantee it will save you money long term.
This Fiesta was recovered into us with its oil warning lamp on and a horrendous noise coming from its engine.
Once we had stripped the engine we could see the cause of the noise, the inlet cam pulley had been starved of oil which was allowing excessive free play (variable timing pulley) which as you can imagine is not great when the engine is running!
The cause of the oil starvation was quiet apparent when looking at the oil pump pick up, it was completely blocked with rubber debris from the failing wet belt.
The customer was very honest with us and admitted she had not had the car serviced regularly which would of allowed some of the rubber to be cleaned out with an oil change instead of blocking the oil pump.
This Ford Transit EcoBlue was recovered into us with a very hard brake pedal and no brakes which sounded like a brake servo fault.
To test the brake servo we removed the vacuum feed to it to see if it was holding pressure but instantly found out that there was no vacuum to it.
Tracing the vacuum pipe back checking for leaks or breakages to the vacuum pump we found no vacuum at all.
After removing and stripping the vacuum pump we could see the plastic internals of the pump had broken up into several pieces.
Vacuum pump
We replaced the vacuum pump and carried out a road test, everything seemed OK so we handed the van back to its customer.
Unfortunately the customer only managed about 60 miles before the exact same fault occurred again.
Once the van was back with us we removed the new (genuine Ford) vacuum pump to find it had broken up exactly the same as before.
We carried out an oil pressure test on the van and check for oil pressure up to the vacuum pump which all seemed OK.
After speaking to Ford technical services we were told this is know a known problem by Ford and is caused by ‘wet belt degradation‘, bassicaly the wetbelt is breaking up and the small parts off rubber are blocking oil ways and pick ups and intermitantly starving parts of the engine of oil, the main one being the vacuum pump.
The Fix
Even though this van has only covered 90,000 miles and is a 2017 and Ford recommend the wetbelt to be replaced at 144,000 or 10 years they are now saying they will not cover the warranty of the vacuum pump unless the wetbelt is replaced at the same time.
Rubber deposits
The first thing we did was to remove the sump to access the oil pump and check for the rubber deposits, we were amazed at what we found, we have been replacing the wetbelts on the Transit EcoBlue and EcoBoost engines for quite some time now but have not seen deposits like this before.
After removing all parts required to carry out the wetbelt and oil pump belt replacement we had to vigorously wash out all accessible galleries, pipes and engine internals.
Wetbelt
We replaced the wetbelt kit, oil pump belt, front cover and sump then ran the engine up to see if we still had good oil pressure, which we did.
it is not recommended to use oil flushes with engines that run wetbelts as this can also damage the belt so we ran the engine for 60 miles and drained the oil again to get as much debris out as we could.
Warning!!
If you have a Ford Transit EcoBlue or a Ford car using the EcoBoost engine make sure to keep on top of the servicing and use the correct oil, if you have brought one recently and have no service history get the wetbelt replaced as the consequences are very expensive compared to replacing the belts.
Ignore Fords recommended change interval and aim for 8 years or 80,000 miles, and even if you are not doing massive miles every year still at least have your oil and filter replaced as a preventative measure.
