About to buy 2000 Ford Focus... yay or nay?

Eagle

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My daughter is really needing a car that gets good gas mileage. She found a little 2000 Ford Focus Kona edition with a 5spd manual trans for $2k with 132k on the clock.

Do I "let" her buy this thing? Or is there anything I don't know about these that is going to come back to bite me?

KBB says its worth $1300, but they're selling on CL for $2k+ no prob and with more miles too. Guess this one has good tires and a fresh clutch ~5k ago.
 

RICH17

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They're both 2 liters. One is a single cam and the other is the dual cam zetec motor. basically fords vtec IIRC.

The single cam motor says something like split port injection? or something on the valve cover. They made very few and the motors were junk. I remember some guy trying to find rebuild parts when I worked at Napa and we had nothing.
 

Eagle

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Looks like they are zetec engines:

engine-compartment1.JPG
 

boostedguy05

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FROM WIKI

Kona: the Kona Mountain Bike Edition (May 2000, 5000 examples), featuring an "Out Of Bounds" Kona bike, bolt-on bike rack, nylon washable seat covers, unique colors Dirt Metallic and Rainforest Green, unique side moldings with molded-in Kona Moto logo and bike tire treads; 16” six-spoke machined aluminum wheels and heavy-duty black rubber floor mats, also with Kona Moto logo and bike tire treads
 

Bob Kazamakis

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Motor mounts all the time, coolant tubes and thermostat housings go bad a ton (they're both shit plastic, trans sucks.

My wife had an 00 with the zetec engine and auto trans. Sold it at 110k on it. I think I went through 4 sets of coolant plastic parts, a motor mount every year we owned it and the trans did some funny stuff sometimes even with doing drain and fills since she got it at 20k miles. Replaced all wheel bearings around 60k to get rid of terrible vibrations and was starting to come back right when we sold it.
 

Outlaw

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What kind of gas mileage is she trying to achieve? Cherokee prices are down right now, she could scoop one of those up and you could do an injector mod on there for her. I was getting hand calculated and proven 19.5-20.0 MPG out of mine. Not spectacular, but, good for a dead nuts reliable SUV that's 4x4 and can take a beating.
 

snakebyte

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I would pick up a 2000 civic instead, the single cams are great on fuel, super reliable and still as comfortable as the Focus. Even doing the damn water pump was a pain in the ass since you need to drop the passenger side motor mount and lift the motor while trying to wiggle it out. The motor has to be played with up and down, not hard just a pain in the ass that car was. I ended up selling it for 700 bucks for 110K on it. Just google Ford Focus Solenoid A and see how many issues come up, in my case it was not the solenoid and was the clutch packs or something else.
 

Bob Kazamakis

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This one is a manual transmission. That helps with a lot of the big expenses with them.
You could spend the money for aftermarket motor mounts. The stock and the auto store replacements are hydraulic filled and collapse.

The plastic coolant parts are just flat annoying. Multiple times Id walk out to a driveway with a puddle of coolant on it. The inner part of the thermostat housings crack and then coolant just pours out of it. The plastic pipe above the radiator could be remade with metal if you wanted. When that breaks it's usually a crack that squirts coolant out.
 
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