I have a '95 Escort, manual tranny, that began giving problem with starting about a month ago. Would start engine and as soon as it turned, would completely cut off, seemed as if it was not getting any power. Would take a few additional tries to get it to turn the engine again but would stay on and be fine. One day would not start at all, took it to the shop, said I had a bad battery. Had oil change, new fuel filter, tune up (new plugs and wires), also recommended new tranny belt, brand new battery and cleaned up battery connections. Drove home and car began sputtering intermittenly on take off from a stop. Began hearing clicking noise while driving. After 20 or so mile hwy drive, car was off for about 30 minutes, attempted to turn it back on and engine turned over, felt like engine was about to fall apart and then car shut off. Attempted to turn engine again, again felt like it was falling apart, real loud clicking noise and engine shuts off immediately. I have read a few forums mentioning timing belt possibly being the culprit, but any advice is welcomed! Car is currently dead. Please help!

Call up the shop that did the work. Tell them it died and stranded you. Describe the problem symptoms. Ask did they test drive it any as it was nothing but trouble from the moment you left. Complain that they should have better figured out what is wrong with it. Did they charge much for diagnosing what was wrong or just labor to r/r parts? You may not be able to pressure them to look at it for no additional compensation even though they didn't guess right the first time.

It seems odd your problems all originated around the same time your battery started to die. I wonder if your engine computer hasn't had a chance to reset and relearn how to run the engine. I only think of this because your original problem was electrically related. What doesn't jive with this idea is it dying not till later. Need good gas pressure, injectors, coil, gas pump, cap and rotor if you have, fuel pressure regulator, MAF sensor, throttle postion sensor, IAC, throttle position sensor.

Welcome to AF. Have you read any other threads about the valve seat dropping on cylinder 4? This is a problem for almost half of the people that have over 100k. It starts out with the engine running poorly, then you hear the tap and think it is a bad lifter, then the seat drops into the combustion chamber and chews everything up. One way to tell is to pull the plug out of cylinder 4 (far right) and look for the electrodes to be beaten up.