Our customer brought his Ford Transit Custom to us with the clutch pedal a lot higher than it should be but the biting point was still ok?
A lot of cars and vans have a ‘stop’ for the clutch pedal in the form of a bracket or a rubber but in the case of the Transit Custom it is built into the Clutch Master Cylinder itself.
Once we had removed the Master Cylinder we could see that the operating arm inside had broken allowing the return spring to make the pedal sit high.
Clutch Master Cylinder
When we replaced the clutch master cylinder and bled the hydraulic system we could see the pedal was now sitting in its correct position and felt a lot more natural to drive.
This Ford Transit was recovered into us after breaking down on the M5, the customer said he suddenly lost all power and pulled into a laybuy.
After a quick investigation it was very apparent that the van had no compression and we suspected the wet belt had failed causing the crank shaft to keep turning without the cam shafts which has caused internal damage.
We removed the front end of the van including head lamps, radiator and bumper to allow easy access to the wet belt cover.
Once we removed the cover we could see that the wet belt had indeed failed, several teeth were missing from the belt which had allowed the crank and cam shafts to turn separately and caused piston and valve contact.
Check your timing belt history! We recommend 80,000 miles or 8 years.
Teeth missing from wet belt
With a quick inspection of the damaged parts we decided it would be cheaper for the customer to fit a reconditioned engine than for us to repair his damaged engine.
Ford are aware of the premature failure of their Wet Belts which on this model were due at 150,000 miles or 10 years but as far as we are aware they are offering no help if the vehicle is out of warranty.
When the new engine arrived we started swapping all auxiliary parts from the old engine to the new engine carefully inspecting for damage or wear in the process, all gaskets and seals were replaced at the same time.
Reconditioned engine from Ford
With the engine and gearbox built up it was time to refit them into the van and get to a stage where we can run the engine and test for any leaks or blows before refitting the front end.
Starting an engine after such a big job is always an intense feeling no matter how confident you are, but after checking and double checking we were happy with our work and we turned the key…….. and voila, life.
We left the engine running for some time to allow the oil and coolant to get up to temperature and so we could check for any problems.
All good so time to refit the front end and road test, after the road test we recheck all levels and hand back to the customer.
This Ford Transit 2.0 EcoBlue TDCI came into us with a complaint of excessive oil leaks, high crankcase pressure and intermittent white smoking.
When you removed the oil filler cap there was an excessive amount of pressure and white smoke coming from inside the rocker cover and also from the breather pipe going to the inlet pipe.
On this Puma engine to be able to remove the rocker cover you must first remove the diesel injectors and when we did the problem became apparent.
what had been happening was that the injector to cylinder head copper sealing washers had failed and was allowing the combustion gases to enter the engine which was causing the high crankcase pressure.
Injector blowing past copper sealing washer
The high crankcase pressure is also what we believe was causing all the oil leaks on the engine, the engine was trying to find the easiest way to relieve the pressure, either a weak seal or weak gasket would allow the engine to release pressure and oil hence ‘oil leak’
How to resolve the issue.
With the injectors removed we removed the old copper seals and cleaned the body of the injectors using a wire wheel, making sure not to touch the tip of the injector as modern injector nozzle holes are so fine any attempt to clean them normally causes damage.
Using an injector seat cutting tool we cleaned the sealing base of the injector and also cleaned the injector holes in the cylinder head making sure to blow out any excess aluminium that the cutting tool may have left in the injector holes.
Injector seat cutting tool
Using a new rocker cover gasket and injector sealing washers (copper) we refitted the injectors making sure to also replace the injector clamp bolts as they are a one time use stretch bolt that require torquing to a specific setting when fitted.
Once rebuilt we started the engine and gave it a few minutes to settle due to having the injectors removed, and instantly we could see by removing the oil filler cap that there was now very little crankcase pressure and no sign of white smoke.
After a long road test the vehicle was returned to the garage to have a final check over for any signs of leaks and for an oil and filter change as the oil would have been contaminated with diesel and carbon deposits from the injectors which had been blowing past and then returned to its owner.
