Help - bought a bad car.

Defcon5 said:
Why not just take it to Ford and ask them if it has the right bits on.
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Would they be able to check everything thoroughly without having to remove various bits?

It would probably be a good idea to do that just so we know a bit more about it before we take it back to the dealers. I am not sure how the dealers would react to someone else taking a 'double overhead manifold sprocket' to it while it is still under their warranty, I'm sure that if they are not totally legit they would jump at any excuse not to honour the warranty.

What sort of cost would we be looking at for a Ford place to do that? Is it a 20 minute job or would they take a while? My local mechanic did what he did for free, to help us out, albeit possibly confusing us even more, but he did show us the gearbox, so I'll give him some credit.
 
[TW]Fox;21685071 said:
Do we know this for sure?
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It has bits chipped out to make it fit.. so yes, we know this for sure. Granted the ratios might be actually be right (this we don't know).
 
I'd whole heartedly guess that Ford being the ones who spend all day everyday working on fords, and mostly the oily dirty undersides of them will be able to diagnose what has happened to your car in a bout 10 seconds flat. I'd say take it there and talk nicely to the guys for a free 2 minute check over and get there proper expert opinion.

They might ok the gearbox 'mods' and advise what other bodges or damage has been done.
 
bledd. said:
I'm drunk as hell, but that wheel looks oval shaped
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Well, I'm 100% sober, and looking at the first picture he posted, of the wheel on the right, if you look straight down from the suspension strutt, the wheel rim does not look perfectly round, can anyone else see this? Either it's camera shake, or perhaps the car has had a high speed impact?? It doesn't look perfectly round in the pic to me.

Rgds
 
radderfire said:
Well, I'm 100% sober, and looking at the first picture he posted, of the wheel on the right, if you look straight down from the suspension strutt, the wheel rim does not look perfectly round, can anyone else see this? Either it's camera shake, or perhaps the car has had a high speed impact?? It doesn't look perfectly round in the pic to me.

Rgds
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That was sort of the point of the picture - to illustrate how buckled the wheel is....
 
I really couldn't say what's what with regards to the engine and gearbox, but I am almost certain that your vibration issue is going to be that buckled wheel, it's a bad one.

I would be hugely surprised if it really did have the wrong gearbox and engine ...still, I suppose stranger things have happened.
 
I agree that that wheel looks to be the source of the vibration, even though it's on the back - I had a wheel that took an almighty smack on a pothole once, didn't look as bad as that one but no matter how well it was balanced/where it was put on the car it caused vibrations at motorway speeds. That's one hell of a hit the wheel has taken though, I suspect your car has been over a kerb at lowish speeds (i.e less than 10mph) possibly in poor weather or had some sort of bizarre car park incident.

To be honest I find it fairly unlikely that the car has the completely wrong engine/gearbox setup if they've managed to match it up and the car drives fine. The engine itself looks in order from the photo and whilst the gearbox has been chopped the key to finding out whether it's good, bad or indifferent is to get a part number from it / have ford tell you what it is. It's entirely possible the design was revised at some point and what you have there is a slightly older/newer box.

What is the trader you purchased from saying on the issue?
 
+1 for taking it to an official Ford dealer and get them to spend 5 mins with it on the lifts - if you explain the situation they'll doubtlessly do it for free as most garages offer a check-up service as it usually brings work their way when something is wrong with it. If there's something disastrously amiss with the gearbox or engine their eyeballs will pop out when they see it and they'll tell you right away.
 
Are you sure that when the mechanic said he didn't recognise the engine and it might be from another manufacturer he wasn't referring to the gearbox? as that would make more sense if the box has been bodged/butchered into place.
 
Who else uses that Ford Diesel engine, iirc some of the ford stuff is shared with the PSA group.
 
Thanks for the suggestions there, much appreciated.

Our local mechanic may have just meant the gearbox is wrong, or I may have misheard what he said, but either way we're in the process of arranging to take it to a Ford dealer now, just so we have some confirmation and hopefully a better idea of what's gone on before we go back to the dealers. The dealers haven't actually seen the full list of things wrong with the car yet, they only know about the engine/gearbox being potentially mis-matched. I have managed to find what I believe to be the engine number, but Ford will confirm this no doubt. If what I found is the engine number then it doesn't match the HPI check we did ourselves yesterday, but apart from that there doesn't appear to be anything else suspicious with the results.

On the day of sale, the dealers told us that the car was clean with absolutely no issues whatsoever, fully HPI checked, no accidents, good engine, warranty, etc, and being the fool I was I believed them and the illusion they presented. If I had taken just one look underneath the car, I mean actually under the engine, we would not have bought the car as it has more leaks than I have ever seen on any car, I don't know how many different fluids there are in a car but I would guess this one is leaking a sample of them all.

When I have the full list of things wrong with it typed up, hopefully confirmed by Ford, I'll post it here for you all to see. The engine and gearbox appear to me to be the worst of the issues but it does have quite a few other things wrong with it. From looking at the body of the car and the interior, plus it being a nice drive, you would never believe there is so much wrong underneath.

On top of all that I've been ill for about a week now but yesterday I woke to find my face was swollen, and it's even bigger today! I look like the bloody elephant man!
 
Right, the car is booked in at the Ford place for 1:30 this afternoon.

One thing the girl on the phone did say was that just because the gearbox or whatever has had bits chopped off it doesn't necessarily mean it's the wrong one for the engine.

I suppose we'll just have to wait to see what they say after they've looked at it themselves.
 
shoot1st said:
One thing the girl on the phone did say was that just because the gearbox or whatever has had bits chopped off it doesn't necessarily mean it's the wrong one for the engine.
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Can you post up a larger res version of the first pic? What the girl on the phone said doesn't sound right!
 
Why don't you just take it back to the place you bought it from for them to sort it?

It sounds like you have been spooked by potential poor advise from the 2nd mechanic.

The vibration is a blatent issue caused by a buckled wheel which they will sort. Get them to have a look at the gearbox, if they then come back with the all clear then go to ford etc for a 2nd opinion.

This is what I would do anyway...
 
GinG said:
Why don't you just take it back to the place you bought it from for them to sort it?

It sounds like you have been spooked by potential poor advise from the 2nd mechanic.

The vibration is a blatent issue caused by a buckled wheel which they will sort. Get them to have a look at the gearbox, if they then come back with the all clear then go to ford etc for a 2nd opinion.

This is what I would do anyway...
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We'd like confirmation before going back to the dealers as I agree that it is possible we may well have been spooked by the local mechanic. However, prior to making this thread we have never had any reason to question him or any of the work he has done. A few people have recommended taking it to Ford so that's what we're going to do. We'll hopefully get the full picture by means of a proper printed out list detailing exactly what is wrong with the car.

At the moment, the buckled wheels (both the back ones are buckled, the other one only slightly) are the least of our worries in all honesty, we know that they will be fixed/replaced eventually now that we are aware of it, we're more concerned with the rest of the problems our mechanic pointed out.
 
I think the biggest question that needs to be asked here is, why on earth would anyone go through so much hassle to fit the wrong box to a car for which the "right" gearboxes are peanuts to buy and fit. I have no doubt in my mind it would be more time consuming and expensive to make the wrong box fit and work correctly.
 
I would advise you didn't tell the garage you purchased the car from that you have had other Mechanics/Garages working on the car as this could void the warranty and annoy them.

Getting Ford to look at it is a good idea, but you need to give the garage that sold it to you a decent chance to look over it and resolve any issues.

I think you mentioned the vibration was on the steering wheel? If this is the case then I doubt it will be felt in the steering wheel. Normally, buckled / out of balanced wheels are felt in the seat (your arse).

Hard to tell from that picture but it would seem that the bolts don't match up entirely on the bell housing/block. This is NOT to say that this is wrong, one bolt missing is unlikely to cause an issue, however, it's not right.

They may fix the fluid leaks for you, depends where they are coming from.

Lesson learnt though fella, next time take a mechanic with you and have a thorough inspection of the car. Had this been a private seller you would be on your own now, sold as seen.
 
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