Mondeo ST TDCI

First Question people my ask...do you do the miles to warrant the diesel over the fantastic V6 engine?

The car is a great looking car however I have always felt a little sad inside when I see the single tail pipe when following a Mondeo ST!
 
Car isn't for me, it's for my brother. Currently has an Audi A3 on lease but is changing jobs and wants a sub £8k.

He covers 19,200 miles a year for work alone, so diesel is warranted on this occasion
 
my mum has this car, dont know if thats a good thing or bad thing :)
i think its a cracking car, pulls great, great on fuel, its very comfy (the seats are lovely)
things i dont like and things to look out for
1) check the bumpers for cracks and correct fitting, quite a few have been bummped and they are very easy to crack also the sides of the bumpers are held in by a kind of pin thats in the car and a little hook moulded into the bumper, these are very easy to break.
2) the wheels corrode really easily, they can be fixed but most people just get them painted rather than the cut finnish they come with new (this ruins them imo)
3) the single tailpipe on the oil burner (the petrol looks so much better with twin exit)
4) they can go through brake pads quickly depending on how its driven
5) check th cd player, the 6 cd stack has a habbit of messing up and so wont load or eject discs
6) check all the bulbs on the instrumend display, if one goes its a PITA to replace

the car shares an engine with the x type jag, so parts are very easy to get and you can flick between the two. (my mum saved £75 by buying a new EGR from jag instead of ford)

i think overall its a very nice car and good examples dont cost the earth,
 
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I've got one of these and did about 22k in it last year. It's a nice car to look at and be in but its like a Transit in the mornings! It comes with a lot of warnings about injectors etc.

I average about 45mpg most of the time, a motorway run brings over 50mpg easily.
 
Janesy B said:
From the outside it sounds particularly bad, noticeably worse than others. The Transit comment is pretty spot on.
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The new German diesels are the only diesel engined cars I have ever experienced being slightly quiet (for a diesel).

So considering a diesel car is a must, the fact it's loud isn't really worth noting, as all diesels around this price will have a horrible noise!!!
 
Had one for 18 months and did 49k miles in it.

Great cruiser and good on fuel. Servicing was ok and I stuck with main dealer all the time.

I did have trouble with the EGR but was sorted under warranty. Normally is around a £100 fix.

Dash bulb went in mine and was £60 in labour to replace a 69p bulb. I nearly coughed when I saw the receipt.

Has the usual problems with EGR, DMF and Injectors that Mondeo's are know for.

When buying check the fitment of the rear bumper. Poor design meant that it starts to sag. This can break the lugs that fit it fully and can require a new bumper. Ford did make foam inserts for the Zetec you could buy to fix this but I believe they stopped suppling them. Is it quite normal for there to be a 10mm gap between rear bumper and rear lights. If lugs are ok you can probably get it sorted.

All in all it was a good car for me. Treated its tyres well for a torquey engine and never had much of a problem with it. Fitted 4 adults in without a problems and the heated half leather was great in winter.

Sold my 2007 plate car in 2009 with 59k on it for £7700 so they dont seemed to have dropped massively since then.
 
My stepfather had one and it was a money pit after the warranty expired. DMF, injectors, Mass air flow, countless front suspension arms and it wore tyres on those nice 18 inch rims like an F1 car.

On top of that there were intermittent engine faults like it dying for no reason, warning lights that would come on for no reason and noises from the rear that were never solved. The car at 6 years old was p/ex for little more than scrap value.

Can't you go petrol? I don't think Diesel is the Mondeo ST strong point.
 
Third Opinion said:
My stepfather had one and it was a money pit after the warranty expired. DMF, injectors, Mass air flow, countless front suspension arms and it wore tyres on those nice 18 inch rims like an F1 car.

On top of that there were intermittent engine faults like it dying for no reason, warning lights that would come on for no reason and noises from the rear that were never solved. The car at 6 years old was p/ex for little more than scrap value.

Can't you go petrol? I don't think Diesel is the Mondeo ST strong point.
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If you don't want the ST220 i'd look at the 2.0 petrol instead. The diesel is decent for MPG but any savings will get eaten up with replacing injectors and the odd DMF as well.
 
Tute said:
If you don't want the ST220 i'd look at the 2.0 petrol instead. The diesel is decent for MPG but any savings will get eaten up with replacing injectors and the odd DMF as well.
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Again, the car is not for me. But I would think at a rough guess of 25,000 miles per year the diesel is warranted...
 
I've had my 2005 ST TDCi since it was 5 months old, although I sold it my friend who ran it for a couple of years while I had an Octavia vRS and then decided to buy it back from him as I preferred it to the Octavia.

Bad Points:
Injectors can go, but its not as common a problem as many would have you believe. The initial calibration on the 2.2 TDCi caused excessive wear on the injector tips and when Ford released a new calibration and cars were upgraded (which many were because the software update was also required to fix a software problem with the ESP system which affected lots of cars) it caused them to run like an old tractor. Lots of cars had new injectors under warranty - including mine at 35k, it's now on 80K and it's been fine ever since.

The signs of injector wear are a big puff of white or blue smoke on a cold start and rough running for the first 5-10 seconds. A small puff of smoke is normal, but if you can see it in the mirrors it's a sign of a problem. Worn injectors will not cause the car to break down though - you'll just get increasingly rough running from cold. A full set of replacement injectors will set you back £500-£600 from a Delphi Diesel Specialist, and I wouldn't bother taking the car anywhere else if you suspect problems with the injectors or fuelling system. Common rail injectors can fail spontaneously - they have tiny electrically operated valves in them. You can change a single injector. If an injector fails the car will go into limp home mode.

Clutch and DMF - The clutch doesn't have any specific issues, but the Dual Mass Flywheel can fail. This will manifest itself as a metallic rattle at idle, particularly on start and switch off. Starting problems can be a sign of DMF problems as they drop metal filings into the starter motor. They don't usually fail catastrophically, but this is an expensive job - £600 or so for the full clutch and DMF kit and it's a 6-8 hour job to change as you have to drop the front subframe. Labouring the engine and lots of town running kills DMF's.

The aux belt pulleys and tensioners originally fitted to cars built before late 2006 can cause a resonance in the belt that makes a horrible flapping noise. This will disappear at the very slightest touch of the throttle. A modification kit is available, many will have had this under warranty, but its about £125 for the kit, plus fitting.

The points about the ST rear bumper are true. If the fixings are OK, the best fix is to gently jack up the corners of the bumper until it's level and square, then drill 6 holes and fit some self tapping screws with big heads and repair washers underneath behind the centre panel on the bumper. There is a bolt-on crossmember behind there so you're not drilling into the body or anything. I had a new bumper under warranty, but after a year that started to drop as well. I screwed mine on ages ago and it's been fine.

The diamond cut wheels corrode. Get them painted or powder coated if you want the finish to last.

They are a bit noisy from outside when it's very cold. This engine is 2 generations old now so it won't be as quiet as the latest engines, but it's no worse than a VAG PD engine when cold and it's noticeably smoother and quieter when warm.

The factory fit exhaust is no longer available, and the replacement Ford backbox is about £130 and doesn't have a chrome tailpipe so looks totally naff. I got a Powerflow dealer to build and fit a custom SS cat back system for £250. Check the weld between the backbox and the pipe as they always fail here, but they rot from the inside out so it can be difficult to see.

The back seats can be really noisy where the vinyl covering on the sides touches the plastic trim. Cover with self adhesive felt for a couple of quid off ebay to fix this.

With primarily motorway use you will see 50MPG, mixed use mid-40's, dropping to 40 if you have significant town use.

Decent 225/40/18 tyres can be expensive, but otherwise they are cheap cars to run. They don't need fancy oil and there's no cambelts to change. Other than some of the front suspension parts (which are robust), everything else is standard Mondeo stuff so it cheap and readily available.

On 25k a year you'll save about £1100 a year in fuel (35mpg for a 2.0 petrol vs 47mpg for the diesel).

I've been really happy with mine - the handling is great and whilst the V6 would be preferable when pushing on, it uses 50% more fuel and to be honest most of my time is on the motorway with the cruise control on.
 
As said above, if the ST220 is a no-go because of the fuel costs then advise your brother to check out the 2.0 litre petrol engine before jumping for an STD.

A well-specced petrol will be exactly what it says on the tin - a decently screwed together mile muncher with plenty of toys and comfort.

On a personal note, after owning an ST220 for the last 13 months I just couldn't ever consider going over to the diesel ST and that's reinforced by when I have a ride in my good friends STD, and he grudgingly agrees with me that it feels like the ST220's ugly sister. No Recaro seats, no fantastic engine that loves to be revved and has a great sound, his feels a little wallow-ier than mine which is probably partly down to the seats offering little lateral support as opposed to the ST220. The wedge of torque in 3rd and 4th gear is nice and if I'm caught in the wrong gear it'll happily stick to my bumper but purely as a driving machine, the ST220 is by far the better car. If you offset the cost of fuel against the potential usual diesel reliability issues, plus the fact the ST220 is much much rarer and seems destined for classic fast Ford territory and will hold much better resale value towards the latter end of its life, the ST220 seems to be the better car for long-term ownership.

Put it this way, there's very few STD's get looked after - looked after as in meticulous, slightly obsessive comprehensive servicing, preventative maintenance and generally being wrapped in cotton wool.

Every ST220 owner I know from the few who live near me to the obvious fanatics on the owners forums absolutely adore their cars and keep them in superb condition.

Really, really depends what your brother wants from a Ford. Disposable white goods or something that sparkles a little?
 
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My brother has one and he claims he is only getting low 30's mpg. I'm not sure if he has a lead boot or he's failing on maths though.
 
rossk26 said:
Again, the car is not for me. But I would think at a rough guess of 25,000 miles per year the diesel is warranted...
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I'd really not, the 2.0 petrol is going to get you the majority of the economy of the ST TDCI at motorway speeds, and yet you have the added bonus of not having a turbocharger, high pressure injectors, or a particularly flimsy flywheel going wrong.

That's before I even start on the added risk of the DPF as well, and from my own diesel experience you might find the EGR system throws up the odd fault too.
 
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