Originally Posted By: bigjl
Originally Posted By: FordCapriDriver
Originally Posted By: bigjl
To be honest I owned a few Fords with this engine and worked on many more when I ran a Garage in the early (ish) 90's.
It is not the best but it is far from the worst.
I wouldn't flush it or anything.
Just use a decent oil and change it at shorter intervals
Thw Shell oil you mention seems a decent choice for this old CVH lump.
Course Vibratory and Harsh as we used to call them.
Haha i am well aware of the CVH's reputation, this is my second CVH, we used to have a Mk5 Escort 1.6 Ghia Estate with a carbed 1.6 CVH, it made it to 280.000 Km with no problems, we had it 10 years before it got broken up for spares and scrapped, in the end the engine burned some oil but ran ok, we just did normal servicing to it, the fuel economy was [censored] though, similar to my 3 litre MkII Capri.
This Xr3i has Bosch K-Jet Mfi and the fuel economy is a lot better, but still harsh when you get above 4000rpm, for sure, what does surprise me is that it doesn't seem to burn any oil at all, or smoke.
If you get bored with the current engine and gearbox some people do convert the Mk3 and Mk4 Escort to a Zetec engine with the later gearbox.
Have never done it but have been told that it makes a huge difference.
I never found the. cVH engines to be that noisy or rough.
When compared to modern stuff sure but they were fairly strong.
One of the places that does lots of stuff for Fast Fords still trades today in Essex.
Burton Power.
http://www.burtonpower.com/
I would never ever put a Zetec in it, the car is 100% original including the engine ofcourse.
I know about Burton Power, bought stuff from them for my Capri many times