Ford Escort Service Manuel Mistakes/Areas/Myths and B.S teaching

This is the place to correct the Service Manuel... I'll start the first one, the 1.9 engine is (NOT) an interference engine... When the timing belt breaks,the valves and the pistons will (not) hit each other.. No damage will take place in the chamber..

The pistons and piston rings on some 2001 and 2002 SOHC Escorts are 1.2/1.5/3.0mm (top/middle/bottom-oil) in thickness, not 1.5/1.5/3.0mm as on other 97-02 3rd gen Escorts. There's no Ford documentation anywhere (should be a TSB) that mentions this production change.

Ford's 1989 Escort shop manuals (not sure about their shop manuals for other first-gen years, but I wouldn't be surprised), as well as Chilton's (which are based on Ford's manuals) for the whole first gen Escort series, list incorrect resistance figures for the fuel injectors, for both CFI and EFI engines. Ford says all these injectors should be 12-16 ohms, which would make them high impedance, but they're actually low impedance. The CFI fuel injector should measure 1.0-2.0 ohms, and the EFI injectors should measure 2.0-2.7 ohms. AllData online has the correct figures. Oddly, the photos in Chilton's (which I think are taken from Ford's Engine/Emissions Diagnosis Manual?) show a Fluke digital meter being used to measure the resistance of a first-gen CFI injector, and the meter's display shows the correct figure of 1.5 ohms, while the text accompanying it says it should measure 12-16 ohms.

I don't know if there's some partial explanation for this, like maybe Ford used high impedance injectors for the early MFI version of the 1.6 engine, and then switched to low impedance injectors for all subsequent fuel-injected first-gen engines, and failed to update their shop manuals.

Incidentally, the proper part numbers for the Escort's CFI fuel injector are Motorcraft CM-4558, and various Ford part numbers (like E7FZ-9F593-A or -B), though they won't be marked that way--instead, many are marked (on their white plastic top) with a shortened Ford number, E7EE-CA, and a Bosch number of 0 280 150 604. The standard TJ23 injector is also listed by many sellers as equivalent, but its filter bands around the injector don't seem to be located where they'd provide as close proximity to the fuel supply and return holes in the injector bore in the throttle body, so maybe the Motorcraft/Ford parts are wiser to stick with. My 89 Pony came to me with a non-Motorcraft/Ford, TJ23-style injector, so I know it does work, but maybe not as well as the Motorcraft/Ford part numbers.

In various specification charts in Ford's later (starting in 1985?) first-gen Escort shop manuals which combine references to both the EFI and the EFI HO engines (EFI, without the HO, is what Ford often calls the CFI engine), where both metric and English/decimal figures are listed side by side (with the decimal equivalent in parentheses), though the metric figures are almost always correct, sometimes the decimal equivalents that they're paired with aren't. It wouldn't surprise me if there may be a few incorrect metric figures too, with the decimal figures correct, but I haven't found any yet. For some figures, the error is that whoever did the calculation to convert metric to decimal got it wrong, and for other figures, the error is that correct metric figures for a particular engine, are paired with the decimal equivalent for the other engine. For instance, on p. 21-27-34 of the 1989 shop manual (book 2 of 2), there is a chart that says:

CAMSHAFT (EFI) [again, they mean CFI]
THEORETICAL VALVE MAXIMUM LIFT
Intake........................10.06mm (0.468 in.)
Exhaust.....................10.06mm (0.468 in.)

CAMSHAFT (EFI-HO)
THEORETICAL VALVE MAXIMUM LIFT
Intake........................11.31mm (0.396 in.)
Exhaust.....................11.31mm (0.396 in.)

Here, the metric figures are correct, but the decimal equivalents aren't, or else this would make the valve maximum lift for the EFI/CFI engine more than for the EFI HO (and we know how baffling THAT would be). The decimal figure of 0.468 mistakenly shown for the EFI/CFI engine should be paired with the metric figures (11.31mm) for the EFI HO engine, and it's also wrong--11.31mm is actually 0.445 inch. And the decimal figure of 0.396 mistakenly shown for the EFI HO engine should be paired with the metric figures (10.06mm) for the EFI/CFI engine (at least 10.06mm really is 0.396mm).

Ford also gets some figures for the year ranges reversed, like the cylinder bore diameter for the 1985-87 and 1988-90 models, and here too, their decimal figures don't equal their metric figures.

Some dimensions for the first gen CFI cylinder head's valves are also listed incorrectly, both in Ford's literature, and in literature that derives from Ford's, like Chilton's, and online services like AllData and Autozone's website (which contains copies of the Chilton manuals), and in many online sales listings like those on eBay. These sources list the following dimensions as being for the valve head diameters for the 1.6L, and for both versions of the 1.9L (EFI/CFI and EFI HO/GT), but these are actually only for the 1.6L and 1.9L HO/GT heads:

Intake: 42.1mm - 41.9mm (1.66 in - 1.65 in)
Exhaust: 37.1mm - 36.9mm (1.46 in - 1.45 in)

Here are the actual valve head diameters for the 1.9L CFI head's valves, which are the same dimensions as the valves for at least two of the gen 2 Escort engines, specifically the 1996 1.9L SEFI and the 1999 2.0L SPI:

Intake: 38.9mm - 39.1mm (1.531 in - 1.539 in)
Exhaust: 33.91mm - 34.11mm (1.335 in - 1.343 in)

Rock Auto gets it right, listing the dimensions for the 1.9L CFI LX/Pony valves like so:

Intake: 1.5350" Head Dia.; 0.3313" Stem Dia.; 5.3830" overall length (Rock Auto lists these figures for the Sealed Power V2446)

Exhaust: 1.3390" Head Dia.; 0.3302" Stem Dia.; 5.2710" overall length (Rock Auto lists these figures for the Sealed Power V2445)

It wouldn't surprise me if Ford's pre-1985 Escort shop manuals mix references to the regular 1.6L engine and the turbocharged 1.6L, with similar mixups, but I don't have those manuals so I can't say for sure.

Chilton's manuals are based on the Ford manuals, so Chilton's has the same mixups. The equivalent specifications chart in the Chilton's manual for the one in the Ford manual that I cite above, is in section 3, titled "1.9L Engine Mechanical Specifications". I would doublecheck every single figure in that section against reliable references, if those exist, but generally the metric figures are the accurate ones.

As I mentioned, some of the same errors appear in Autozone's online version of the Chilton manuals, and in the online AllDataDIY service (which Autozone now owns), so watch out while referring to these too.

Ford shouldn't have tried to combine specifications for several different engines and year ranges into single charts. I'm guessing that they may have done it to reduce the number of pages in their manuals.

I don't have a Haynes manual for the first-gen Escort, so I don't know if they have the same errors.

I have a 89 escort lx 1.9l engine car I bought in usa. I also have hayes manual and I've also found problems with the specs. For example, you're correct that the intake valve head dimension is 1.5350" and exhaust valve is 1.3390". Also, the diameter of the crankshaft rod bore is smaller than what is written in the hayes manual. The best thing to do is to measure your part and then compare it to the manual's with the wear limit included to figure out where you stand with the numbers. In the hayes manual they do differentiate between CFI and EFI engines. I recommend the hayes manual.