1993. Ford Escort with 1.9L making a strange noise? High miles?
I read a post that talked about the possibility of the #4 cyl. dropping a valve seat. Not one post but several. I pulled the #4 sparkplug and brought the piston to tdc(top dead center) and guess what they were right. I took a small pin light and looked into the plug hole to see the top of the piston and there was lots of pitting and melted metal pullerd the head and that was exactly the problem. If you have a 1.9L take the time to look into the #4 plug hole, it will save you alot of time troubleshooting the noise.Look at the images of the piston and the head. I took the head to an automive machine shop that told me all escorts have the problem from cracks betwen the valves loosening the press fit of the valve seat.See pics attached. Hope this helps someone

I posted a message a couple days ago about a tapping noise coming from around #4 cylinder on my 95 1.9L. I did look at the spark plugs & at the top of the pistons with a flashlight. Spark Plugs looked fine, and the pistons had some carbon but otherwise looked OK. I did a compression test, and all cylinders were 190-195psi which is OK. I would think a compression test would find a damaged valve seat, so I'm thinking my problem maybe is a valve lifter. I don't know how I can easily find out for sure.

okay maybe I'm missing something, where is this attached pic? Shoudl there be a link on thsi post to it?