MitchB
07-17-2004, 11:15 PM
Did some routine maintenance on my dad's 03. 13.5K miles. Dropped the trans pan & installed the Ford pan with a drain plug. Installed a new filter too. Took about 4.5 quarts to refill. I used Mobil I. The pan looked good. I expected to find some buildup of clutch material, but there was hardly any. Used studs with the new pan. Man, what a messy job!
Flushed the brake fluid. Used a syringe to draw out the fluid from the master, then filled with clean fluid and thern bled the brakes. Did you know Ford put rubber caps over all the bleeders to prevent them from rusting & siezing?
Flushed the cooling system. The car was built two years ago and I thought the antifreeze was in there long enough. The trick to eliminate air when refilling is to remove the heater core supply hose from the block. Remove the bleed screw from the front of the manifold and fill until coolant starts coming out of the supply hose. Worked great. This is outlined in the shop manual. It's a pain to remove the factory hose clamps. Every clamp I had to disturb I replaced with a silicon hose clamp. These clamps won't chew up the hoses.
The inside of both front tires won't make it past, oh say, 25k miles. Maybe less.
Engine is still quiet.
I still like the car.
Mitch
Flushed the brake fluid. Used a syringe to draw out the fluid from the master, then filled with clean fluid and thern bled the brakes. Did you know Ford put rubber caps over all the bleeders to prevent them from rusting & siezing?
Flushed the cooling system. The car was built two years ago and I thought the antifreeze was in there long enough. The trick to eliminate air when refilling is to remove the heater core supply hose from the block. Remove the bleed screw from the front of the manifold and fill until coolant starts coming out of the supply hose. Worked great. This is outlined in the shop manual. It's a pain to remove the factory hose clamps. Every clamp I had to disturb I replaced with a silicon hose clamp. These clamps won't chew up the hoses.
The inside of both front tires won't make it past, oh say, 25k miles. Maybe less.
Engine is still quiet.
I still like the car.
Mitch