Over-extended 1.0-litre engine?
One recent admission to our workshop was a 2012 Ford Focus with the 1.0-litre Ecoboost engine, which is designed to be as powerful as the 1600 unit but with the economy of the smaller engine. The turbocharger is watercooled on the three-cylinder micro-engine and this one had covered only 36,000 miles when disaster struck. According to its owner, the engine developed a small misfire but showed no signs of overheating, then the vehicle abruptly ground to a halt and the engine locked solid.
Preliminary investigations showed us that all three cylinders were full of water and the damage this had done to the con-rods could only be guessed. Couple this with the massive job it is to work on the head gasket on one of these engines, requiring the front cover to be removed among other things, the owner decided the quickest and cheapest option was to source a secondhand engine and get us to fit it. The engine being small and only three cylinders meant there was plenty of room for us to lower it into place. As it was, the part of the job that took longest was connecting up the multitude of electrical sensor plugs.