Hi, first I'd like to thank everybody for all the information on this extremely useful site. A few months ago I bought a 94 escort wagon 1.9L with about 110,000 miles, I paid $1450 and it was running... OK. Despite almost zero mechanical experience or know-how, with the help of a haynes manual and this site (mostly this site) I changed the:
oil and filter (OK, I already knew how to do that!)
spark plugs and wires
air/breather filters
PCV valve
fuel filter
transmission filter/fluid
flushed and changed coolant
Seafoamed the fuel system/crankcase/engine
and it seems like a few other things that I can't recall.
After the tuneup, the car ran great, and I proceeded to drive it cross country from Oregon to New York where I'm working this summer. It performed flawlessly and we averaged 38mpg overall for the 4000 mile trip.
Now though it's making a few sounds that are bugging me. First, a short squeal when I accelerate from a stop, which I'm pretty certain is the drive belt. So I bought a belt from NAPA and tried to install it, but for the life of me I couldn't get the thing in! When I took the old one out to compare them they appeared to be the same size, but the tensioner simply wouldn't move enough to give me quite enough slack to get the new belt on. In fact, the old belt was a little difficult to get off, and then back on when the new install failed. I've changed belts on cars with tensioners before and it was a piece of cake, and I'm fairly sure I bottomed out the tensioner's movement, so I'm kind of at a loss. Any ideas? I know wrong size belt seems like the easy answer, but like I said it looked like right when I compared them.
The other noise is a randomly occurring squeak/squeal that seems to be coming out of the center/left of the dash. It's pretty loud and only happens sometimes, and only above 20mph or so, and increases at higher speeds. From what I've seen in the archives here, it sounds like it could be the speedometer cable, but there hasn't any jumping or problems in the speedo itself. Does that rule out the cable?
Thanks for any help you can give me,
Andy
oil and filter (OK, I already knew how to do that!)
spark plugs and wires
air/breather filters
PCV valve
fuel filter
transmission filter/fluid
flushed and changed coolant
Seafoamed the fuel system/crankcase/engine
and it seems like a few other things that I can't recall.
After the tuneup, the car ran great, and I proceeded to drive it cross country from Oregon to New York where I'm working this summer. It performed flawlessly and we averaged 38mpg overall for the 4000 mile trip.
Now though it's making a few sounds that are bugging me. First, a short squeal when I accelerate from a stop, which I'm pretty certain is the drive belt. So I bought a belt from NAPA and tried to install it, but for the life of me I couldn't get the thing in! When I took the old one out to compare them they appeared to be the same size, but the tensioner simply wouldn't move enough to give me quite enough slack to get the new belt on. In fact, the old belt was a little difficult to get off, and then back on when the new install failed. I've changed belts on cars with tensioners before and it was a piece of cake, and I'm fairly sure I bottomed out the tensioner's movement, so I'm kind of at a loss. Any ideas? I know wrong size belt seems like the easy answer, but like I said it looked like right when I compared them.
The other noise is a randomly occurring squeak/squeal that seems to be coming out of the center/left of the dash. It's pretty loud and only happens sometimes, and only above 20mph or so, and increases at higher speeds. From what I've seen in the archives here, it sounds like it could be the speedometer cable, but there hasn't any jumping or problems in the speedo itself. Does that rule out the cable?
Thanks for any help you can give me,
Andy