What Have You Done to Your Cougar Today?

Well today...........not sure weather this belongs here or in the OFS o_O ...while adjusting my passenger side mirror i realised it wasn't working so i thought "Hmm, blown fuse?" so then i switch over to the drivers side mirror and adjust that to confirm, nothing!. The day went by and i forgot about the fuse, until i had to make another trip to Dads this evening. I get into DG and realise my mirror switch/adjuster is reversed so as i adjust the passenger side (as i assume) i am infact adjusting the drivers side and vice versa, so i'm looking at one mirror while adjusting the other.........(n):giggle:o_O......................................:rolleyes:
 
Blew the cobwebs out.

A few weeks ago, one of my project managers asked what I drive and I told him. He said, "I think my brother has one of them in a lockup. Not really very special, are they? I mean they're not worth anything..."

Fast forward to today...

He lives on the south coast, but stays in a hotel in MK during the week. Turns out that last night on the way back to the hotel his Fiesta threw a coil spring. Offside front, country road, nearly killed him. He's pretty shaken up.

His only option was to get the fezzer towed home (I don't want to think about what that cost) and get a taxi in to work from the hotel this morning. So he's telling me about this, and I sympathised. He's without his car, he's miles away from home and as it turns out, can't get a taxi in time to get him to MK station to meet his train. I did the right thing; I offered him a lift.

Now I'm not saying I did anything stupid and I'm not saying I tried to scare him - because I didn't. I wouldn't risk my car and my life for the sake of petty vengeance. But I did press on, as they say.

Somewhere out there, there's a young chap who now has a far better appreciation of what a Cougar is.

tl;dr - "She's got it where it counts, kid."
 
That'll be a mk6 Fiesta no doubt, lots of accounts of unexplained coil-spring failure, even stationary, on well maintained cars.

Something for people who own them to bear in mind! That said if the poor kid has been "Flintstoning" it in a 1.4 Fiesta he'll rightly be terrified of a Cougar!
 
Relliott6879 said:
Really? Never heard of this myself and never had a hint of trouble with mine.
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This summer. without warning! My brothers Rover 75 front o/s coil decided to give up the ghost while we were sat chatting right next to the car :eek: ...
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Relliott6879 said:
Really? Never heard of this myself and never had a hint of trouble with mine.
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They seem to go randomly, when I was on the Fiesta "scene" the mk6s were reasonably new and several people I knew found they had springs fracturing for seemingly no good reason.

Of course that's not to say they "all" do it, no more than "all" V6 Cougars suffer from oil starvation and a rapid death.

My mother has a mk6 with the miserable, hateful, unpleasant and downright vile 1.4TDCi which is on a 2007 registration and which she's owned from new with no such issues, it's approaching 200,000 miles now.
 
benham said:
That'll be a mk6 Fiesta no doubt, lots of accounts of unexplained coil-spring failure, even stationary, on well maintained cars.
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58-plate apparently. I don't know what Mk that is.

Relliott6879 said:
Really? Never heard of this myself and never had a hint of trouble with mine.
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I suppose you'd certainly know of any inherent problems with that model. My suspicion would be that most of the ones failing "without any reason" were probably abused at some point, with some that did genuinely fail randomly (which can happen to any car).
 
I had one go on my first Cougar while it was stood overnight although I believe the damage was caused by a pothole impact the day before.
Apparently the issue with the Fiesta is a 'known' one in that Ford provided, and fitted to later ones, some zinc-covered plates to protect the bottom of the front springs to prevent corrosion related breaks where the lowest coil sits in it's cup.
 
benham said:
My mother has a mk6 with the miserable, hateful, unpleasant and downright vile 1.4TDCi
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? Same engine mine had, only I didn't find it miserable, hateful, unpleasant or downright vile during any of the 140,000 miles I covered in the 6.5 years I owned it. Indeed, I sold it to someone else within this club who, unless he has suddenly developed a penchant for lying through his teeth, also reports being very happy with it. I'd be interested to hear why you abhor them so.
 
Relliott6879 said:
? Same engine mine had, only I didn't find it miserable, hateful, unpleasant or downright vile during any of the 140,000 miles I covered in the 6.5 years I owned it. Indeed, I sold it to someone else within this club who, unless he has suddenly developed a penchant for lying through his teeth, also reports being very happy with it. I'd be interested to hear why you abhor them so.
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Namely because they haven't got the power to fart their way out of a paper bag, they munch injector seals (which if you've done the job you'll know how unpleasant it is, rarely do people want a second round of that job), they're based on an utterly ordinary PSA unit from the 1990s, they shoot their little bolt of torque at about 2000rpm and they're a pig to work on for what should be a simple little engine in a small car.

Then there is of course the dreaded "EAC FAIL" that appears one day and opens an almighty can of wallet emptying worms on a fair number of them.

I'm a great admirer of the Fiesta, don't get me wrong, I just do not like this engine. Subjective, yes, but am I under any obligation based on experience to change my view because somebody else disagrees? No.

It's purely subjective, if you like the engine then that's your opinion and I'm willing to respect that, my mother adores her one (hence she's kept it for so long), drives like a saint and rarely drops below 65mpg, it suits her and I don't have to work on it anymore (so she doesn't have to listen to my belly-aching whilst she's bringing me out coffee as I nurse another injury from trying to remove the injectors). My personal opinion is also that there is no place for a diesel engine in something such as a Fiesta, I'm not 'anti-diesel' (hell, I own three of them at the moment) but it has a time and a place, small superminis isn't one of them in my opinion when the car was offered with some rather sparkling and economical 16v petrol units.

To reiterate I love the mk6 Fiesta, it's a great package and with exception of injector seals, tyres and brake pads (it didn't even get a set of discs until 130k) the car has cost her zilch in repairs. It hasn't stood still long enough to rot the exhaust and the factory unit is still healthy.

But, different strokes for different folks as they say.
 
I must have got a 'good one' then. The injector seals went at around 30,000 miles and, once changed, never gave another moment's trouble, right up to and including the day I sold the car with 158,000+ miles on it. I've no idea what EAC FAIL is, but I know I didn't have one.

As you say though, horses for courses.
 
Relliott6879 said:
I must have got a 'good one' then. The injector seals went at around 30,000 miles and, once changed, never gave another moment's trouble, right up to and including the day I sold the car with 158,000+ miles on it. I've no idea what EAC FAIL is, but I know I didn't have one.

As you say though, horses for courses.
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You'd have known if you did get the dreaded message. Thankfully it seems to happen fairly early on, annoyingly most of the people I know who suffered it had it about a year after the warranty expired.

The old Peugeot engine it is based on wasn't bad (and didn't have the penchant for seals), but it was bland and knocking 600/400cc off the capacity didn't help in my opinion, I had an HDi 306 which I loved to pieces (the first car I spent 'proper' money on) and that was utterly reliable, sold it to my brother-in-law who decided to write it off one day in the way 17 year olds do, and in the process losing his licence but that is a whole other story.....

But, the Fiesta in most guises I love, and am a bit of an anorak, I spent several years as an admin for what was at the time the UKs largest Fiesta club.

Where were we again?
 
Plugs changed out today, I couldn't see a torque setting on the forum for the plugs, so have torqued mine to 20NM (15 FT LB) which is the setting for the plugs on the D which is also an ally engine.
 
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