Since yours is a 97, its pan for the automatic tranny (F4EAT) is the same as all 2nd LX escorts from 1991 through 1997. I have had a coupe of my escorts that needed their pan bolts to be retorqued after a couple of years, due to squishing of the pan gasket - to the point where it would leave a small puddle whenever parked on pavement - but none have rusted through. A tightening (but not an overtightening) of the bolts was done. This is definitely a place where use of a torque wrench is important. I have two torque wrenches; one reading in ft-lbs but while its adjustable, I am not confident it would be very accurate at the extreme low end of that adjustment. So I use my other torque wrench, which is smaller and its adjustment ring reads in lbs-inches. The spec for those 19 pan bolts is 69-95 lb-in, or between 5 and 8 lbs-ft.
For the initial torquing I use about 80 lb-inches, and use the higher setting a day or two later. Dont ovetorque - use a new pan gasket and torque the bolts up properly. Since some of the bolts are very hard to reach due to that front to rear crossmember that runs below the bell housing and under the tranny pan, I would advise either taking that crossmember off - which will require supporting the engine's oil pan with a jack and dealing with some very rusted bolts supporting the crossmember; or jacking up the transmission from the bottom of the bell-housing after undoing the bolts holding the front motor mount (near the radiator) to gain an inch or so of access to the little bolts.
I have rebuilt several of theF4EAT transmissions, and found a few stripped or cross threaded bolts on each tranny. I fixed all of them using helicoil type inserts.
That F1CZ part number prefix means that part was first used on model year 1991 escorts.
Another part of the transmission that can begin to leak, is the oil pump housing, located at the driver's side end of the transmission. And its made of cast iron. With each escort transmission that I rebuilt, i cleaned off that cast iron item, and after drying in the sun, I put rustoleum primer on it, followed by a double coating of glass black paint - also allowed to dry in the sun. From time to time some of our members have had the pump housing begin to leak, and had to either get a rebuilt pump housing (as from ebay) or get a rebuilt transmission. Or to scrap the car.
I live in Virginia, which uses road salt sometimes in winters.
Some of my Friends who live in Minnesota and like a car, have the necessity of putting the car in their garage - for six months of the year.
