I've gone to the darkside(bought a ford)

-
Oldschoolcuda

Oldschoolcuda

Early-A Body Nerd
FABO Gold Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2008
Messages
5,454
Reaction score
3,558
Location
Chesapeake, Va
Have been looking for a cheap great gas mileage neon beater for couple of months to help with wife's 70 mile daily commute with no luck but found this escort:eek:ops: at auction no one seemed interested in because they thought it had title issue ( it didn't, got lucky for once) so took a chance & got her for $800. Turns out it was one owner car donated by family to American Cancer Society. Pleasantly surprised so far. Have just given it a general tuneup but averaged 36mpg on maiden voyage working bugs out before she starts driving it. This thing shocked me with how quick it is with DOHC engine & 5spd also. Feels damn near as fast as my Dakota R/T. Sorry, first non mopar we've had in 15 yrs & I'm done talking about it. Time to modify this little sucker to see if we can get 40mpg. :drinkers:
 

Attachments

  • zx-2.jpg
    124.1 KB · Views: 268
Anything you can do to save some $$$ is a good thing.....
 
Put a high flow air filter in it say a k&n and you'll get right up there. Also those little motors love platnum plugs.
 
Welcome to the dark side! MUUAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!! LOL

Hard to pass up a good deal now a days.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHiUitciuJ8"]Family guy Emporer something something..... - YouTube[/ame]
 
I'll give you $500 being that it is a Ford and then you don't have to be embarrassed. He he he he! :)
 
I'll give you $500 being that it is a Ford and then you don't have to be embarrassed. He he he he!
Click to expand...

Have been wearing disguise while driving it. My local club members may put a hit out on me.

Oldschoolcuda
 
cross.jpg
 
I had one of those as a commuter about 5 years ago....That twin cam Ztec runs good...enjoy saving some gas $$
 
I had one of those as a commuter about 5 years ago....That twin cam Ztec runs good...enjoy saving some gas $$
Click to expand...

The gas mileage is really going to help. That engine really revs. Not used to the sound though( like an angry vacuum cleaner ).

Oldschoolcuda
 
Those are pretty good cars. I don't know the mileage is on your car, but the factory recommends changing the timing belt at 65,000 miles.
 
Thanks dge467. Has 104,000 & pretty sure by look of serpentine belt the timing belt is original. Want to get all possible problems taken care of before wife takes it over.

Oldschoolcuda
 
Oldschoolcuda said:
This thing shocked me with how quick it is with DOHC engine & 5spd also. Feels damn near as fast as my Dakota R/T. :drinkers:
Click to expand...

Isn't it based on a Mazda? (zoom-zoom)

Nice little car, good to own a gas-sipper. BTW no shame in driving a Ford, lots of us do.
 
Your welcome. My wife has a Focus with that motor in it. We changed the belt at work at that mileage. Someone at work commented the timing belt still looked good, which my friend answered, that's how there supposed to look when you change them at the required mileage. LOL!
 
ZX2's are selling well in our area. I've seen people asking $3,000 for 99 & 2000's, you got a good deal.

CHANGE THE TIMING BELT

Buddy bought one for $500 and had to change the belt, he has about $1,200 in the car including the 4 new tires and put over 40,000 miles on it in the past 4 years. Gets up to 33 mpg in the summer.

Nothing wrong with driving a Ford, they pay me weekly so I like the Blue Oval on my pay check, still prefer the Mopars for my fun cars
 
I bought a ZX-2 from a neighbor 3 years ago w/65K on the odo for the same price- had to do a full service on everything and new headlight bulbs, drove it awhile and sold it to a buddy for $2K. He still has it and it hasn't had a problem.
Also own a '72 F250 Camper Special, a '99 Regal GS with a bunch of mods, an '09 XL-7 (we call it a Buizuki, cause it is a strentched Torrent w/the Enclave powertrain), an '85 AHB Gran Fury (amazing stock and low-mile), a '99 Crown Vic P71, and my '69 Valiant V-100 2-dr.
 
Like everyone said.... Change the timing belt I have seen those motors do 350k and the reason it didn't go farther was the timing belt, Still had cross hatch on the cylinders :)
The head was junk and would've cost about $1200 to fix the owner had me loosely bolt it back together and sold the car to pick a part for $350

Joe
 
Another plus for those things is there are a bunch of them on the road so places stock parts and the parts are reasonably priced.
 
I bought a '91 Escort GT brand new that had that same drive train in it. Love the way that car ran and it could burn out with zero wheel hop and lay two black stripes in the road when I hit second. Ran that car up to 140k miles, still ran great, but it started to use oil, paint was faded, body started to rust so I got rid of it. Drove it for 11 years still had original clutch too. It was a very reliable well built car for sure.

You got real lucky, those cars sell for pretty good money at least they do where I live.
 
I had a '94 Hyundai Excel 5spd manual, 4 banger 4 door. I added a Jacobs Pro Street Ignition and went to 40 mpg on the Hwy. No other mod was made.

Given the year of the car, it is hard to improve the ignition. IDK if a ignition add on will help. The Hyundai had a distributor, the Taurus does not.

On my '99 Taurus, I added a K&N into the stock box and a Accel coil. The result was only really seen on the Hwy. to the tune of about an extra 2-3 mpg at best.

I'd like to try a cold air induction pipe and a smoothed out pipe.

On your car, or any other mod to my Ford, would be the muffler. Tricky though since the wife doesn't want a muffler swap alone. Reminds her of the "Fart Can" crew and she wants to avoid that in a big way along with the drone issue of aftermarket mufflers. I do not blame her.
I was thinking about it though. It is a single exhaust pipe Taurus. IDK if a dual would help much at all. Well, at least in stock configuration. Perhaps "Super Trapps" would be OK.
Being a single exhaust car, there could be a 02 sensor issue in true dual's. IDK if the dual exhaust Taurus cars are true dual. Which could very well have extra 02 sensors.

Looking forward to your tinkering and I have a good feeling on this outcome for a few MPG's. Sub-scribed!
 
I drove a friends ford Probe 4 banger for about two months and it was a blast to drive and sipped gas like it was running on air.... and ran like a V6, cool car but to much plastic for me, Congrat's on a good daily gas sipping driver, looks nice too..
 
I had a ZX-2 before buying my truck,was a great little car til the heater core went(spent a day trying to get that sucker out)ended up taking it in,then sold it.The tranny was on it,s way out,so got rid of it before my daughter arrived.:D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top