Advice on 1.9 valve seat issue.

[Nemo69r]

My 96' Ford escort SW, w/1.9 recently lost a cylinder causing the check engine light came on. I consider myself mechanically inclined, so I started to check out the engine for compression, codes, etc. The bad sign was the intake plenum tube heating up from combustion gas blowback into the intake. After a long night of disassembly, I found the answer. The intake seat on the #4 cylinder had cracked twice, pushing open the valve enough to prevent it from seating. My question is why does this seem to be a common problem at this website and my local repair shops are acting as if they have never seen or heard of this before. I'm employed in the auto industry and have never seen any technical bulletin regarding this issue. I can have a new seat installed for little to nothing or buy a rebuilt head for a few hundred bucks. (I am looking towards the cheaper path) Does anybody know if an aftermarket seat will stay in, if the other factory seats will fall out, and if a rebuilt head will solve all issues with the seat problem. Luckily, it never interfered with the rest of the engine, that still happened to look like brand new due to Mobil 1 full synthetic (changed every 10,000 miles, yes that's right 10,000 miles). Cars always break down when the idea is there to trade them off. Thanks for any info.

[nditech]

I bought a 96 with that same problem for 200 bucks since the guy didn’t want to fix it. I had NAPA rebuild the head and when I went to take it out of the bag he knew what was wrong with it. He said there are times he does 4-5 escort heads a week. From what I have found is that ford never had a recall or a bulletin on the problem. But if you ask a ford mech. he knows all about it. The guy at NAPA said it shouldn’t happen again with the new seats. Hope this helps some.

[jeffescortlx]

96 seem's to be a bad year for valave seat's dropping. But with aftermarket seat's in you should be good to go. I have 3 Escorts, so far none of them have dropped a valve seat, but it does happen. If it happend to me I'd just pick up a used head from the U-pull-it yard, they only want 30 bucks a head here. Or I'd just swap in a 97 2.0 SPI motor.

[Nemo69r]

Thanks for the information, parts are on their way.

[butch100]

You got lucky in that you found the problem before the seat
disintegrated and fell into the #4 cylnder. That's what happened
to my '94, I had to change out the #4 piston as it got pummelled
badly. Most machine shops replace the intake seats with a stainless
steel one that wont come out. You could try your luck at the
bone yard but it's a lot of work to change out a head and the
machine shop will also grind the valves and clean the entire head.
Yea, it's more money but at least you wont have to do it again.
let us know if we can be of any help and good luck..