Angrod

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh, I wanna go for a ride!!!!!!

So.... my starter died on me two Thursdays ago. Had to resort to the good old "pop the clutch" method to get it rolling. I wasn't about to be crawling underneath in the cold so I let a local Ford dealer do it. Of course it happens AFTER the comprehensive warranty runs out, and the powertrain warranty doesn't cover the starter. Oh well. Picked it up this past Tuesday. $345 and some change, which was actually lower than what I was originally quoted. Car starts better than it ever has.

Changed the oil on Sunday at 7900 miles. Could have gone a bit farther but it was so close that I just decided to do it. Turns out the drainback valve in the old filter was bad. I wondered why I seemed to get extra valvetrain noise on startup.

Holy crap! I never would have thought the Sable would look good as a convertible, or with two doors. That's awesome! Too bad I don't have the money or place to store it or I would be all over it.

Heater core is probably plugged up. Common issue on these cars. You can try flushing it but it might be a lost cause. You can replace it yourself but it takes some work behind the dashboard.

Check the fuses under the driver's dash in the GEM (or SJB). You may have blown some of those.

AFAIK this affects all Mach RCU's from all years. Ford never seems to have addressed the issue. I don't have anymore info on it myself but I know I encountered this more than once in my bull. Ford doesn't seem to have learned their lesson either. My Fiesta has trouble sometimes remembering my EATC settings when I switch it off/on.

This is a known firmware flaw with the Mach RCU. The only way to fix is to turn the system off and back on like you already do. You can prevent this from happening at all by always turning the system off before shutting off the car.

The Feisty reached a milestone on Thursday. It had 31,1xx on the odo back in late February when I drove it off the lot. The miles sure do add up fast.

Ermahgerd, now I want this forscan tool so I can mess around with my Feisty and see if there is any features I can turn on. Like drl's, instant mpg's, etc etc.

After 7500 miles I performed the first oil change on the Feisty today. Managed to squeeze in all 5 quarts somehow.

Well the a/c in the Fiesty is a bit colder now that I've added maybe half the can of refrigerant. It actually cools down in the sun, it just takes a while. I might add some more at some point but now that the heat has passed I no longer have a pressing need. Also, the rad fan is very, VERY loud when on high. I can hear it inside over the noise of the blower running at max!

Doesn't matter if I'm in stop and go traffic or doing 75 on the highway. The air never gets beyond a mediocre cool. If I run the engine at higher rpm's for a minute or two it gets colder but still not as cold as it should imo. The Taurus at least would get cold after driving on the highway for a few minutes. The Fiesta just doesn't seem to want to cool.

I like it. Gives it some added class imo. Now about my Fiesty..... Just like my last Taurus the Fiesta a/c doesn't get cold. It gets cool but cannot bring the temperature down more than a couple degrees as long as the car is in the sun. Just like the Taurus I have to put it in the shade for 10 minutes so that the interior cools off. As soon as I go back into the sun it starts to warm up again. Anyone else can leave their car baking in the sun all day, we can go for a ride and within a couple minutes the air from the vents is ice cold and the interior cools down nicely. Can my cars do that? NoooooOOOOOOooooooo..... Of course, the a/c system charge is not covered under my CPO warranty, only the physical a/c parts. And you know Ford would want $$$ just to pull my car into their garage. So I grabbed one of those stupid recharge kits from Wally World and put some in the system. Now I just have to wait until tomorrow to see if it helps at all...... And we're in the middle of a serious heatwave too.

You can change the heater core yourself to save $$$. If yours is plugged as bad as the one in the video then you would need acid to flush it clean. I don't know if you have to drain the cooling system for this or not. I forgot that the struts can pop like that when they wear out (although 71k miles sounds premature.) The bearings might have gone bad which I believe is known to cause a popping sound or feel. And a manual from an '02 will be fine for your car. The 2002 and 2003 cars are both Gen 4 and there weren't any significant changes.