Hi mrpeanut, and welcome to the forum. I'll just say right now that I can't help you with this, because my expertise is solely with matters electronic and electrical but I don't like to see you sitting here just talking to yourself day after day! You might want to summarise what you've found so far and post again over in the Engineering & Technical forum, which is for general technical matters but isn't manufacturer-specific; maybe somebody there might recognise the problem if it's a generic issue. I drive a UK diesel Escort so I spend most of my time on the Escort forum; sometimes ZX2 questions get posted in there but they tend not to get too much of a response so I'm guessing that the ZX2 engine differs a fair bit from the standard Escort. I think your best chance of a response would be the
Engineering & Technical forum. If you do start a new thread over there, I would suggest that you also keep this one updated because somebody may stop by who can offer some help. Anybody got any input on this one? Good luck, and I hope you find the resolution soon.