Why Ford Ecoboost Engines Fail

today I'm going to show you what's inside the Ford ecoboost engine and how it works this engine is a 2-liter four-cylinder engine out of a 2016 Ford Focus ST and apparently it's here because it Hydro locked Itself by sucking in snow through its PCV catch can I've taken a quick look around here you can see we do have this big honking plastic intake manifold as well as a plastic valve cover we've also got an aluminum head as well as an aluminum block with the oil filter externally located down here now coming around the front here you can see this is the timing covers both where all the accessories would be this is the water pump over at the back here where the firewall would be you've got the exhaust side of the engine and this turbocharger now the engine does turn over the previous owners said it ran but it ran pretty bad first thing we're going to do is remove this air intake all right now I can remove that intake all right next up we're going to remove the coil packs and we'll just pop these off next up I'm going to remove all the valve cover bolts these are eight millimeter here you can see the bottom of the valve cover everything here is made of plastic and here you can see the seals for the ignition coils and spark plugs over on this side I do like that the bolts are captive so you can't lose them as easily you know the back here you can see we've got our cam sensors for both the intake and exhaust camshafts and then up at the front here you can see these two holes here are the variable valve timing solid all right taking a look under the valve cover on this side here you can see we've got the timing chain it's still got tension on it over here I do notice a lot of rust over on some of these cameras over here but this engine was sitting for a couple of months on this side here we've got our direct injection fuel pump which is driven off the exhaust camshaft and then the intake camshaft we have a vacuum pump that's usually going to drive things like your brake booster now I'm going to next remove the direct injection pump housing here foreign go ahead and start on this vacuum pump here's the vacuum pump all right once you get the bolts out of there see if you can practice open and you can see how that vacuum pump works basically as this camshaft here has a slot it's going to turn this over here and that's what's going to turn this little sweeper and bring air in and compress it all right while we're here we're going to get this water thermostat basically takes all the heater hoses and Joints into the crossover tube now this engine is direct injection only which means that they're going to inject high pressure fuel directly into the combustion chamber as opposed to in the intake which goes into the combustion chamber from before we'll just take off this little padding now here you can see the fuel rail where high pressure fuel is going to enter over here and power these four injectors there's also a sensor over here to monitor the pressure over here we've got the plastic thermostat housing and there's the thermostat it lives next to the water pump over here now this black thing here is an oil separator as it ventilates the crankcase it draws it back into the throttle body which was mounted over here on the intake and here's where the two knock sensors are located on this engine now we're going to move to the front of the engine where we have the timing chain set up over here we have the water pump we're going to go ahead and remove that pop out and pull it all right now let's get that water pump off these are just eight millimeters all right let's switch to the half inch Drive Impact let's see if we can get this bolt out all right so I got something jammed in the timing chain over here let's see if I can crack this bolt loose so since I can't get the timing cover off due to the crank bolt I'm going to go ahead and take off as much as I can from the top end before flipping the engine over I'm gonna go ahead and remove all these 10 millimeter bolts that hold these cam capsule foreign s actually have separate bearings in them as opposed to just being one piece of aluminum and the bearings themselves don't look very used out or squared out this engine definitely still had oil even if it was mixed with water here's your variable valve timing you can see it's got the Dual channels here that are going to feed the two channels on the camshaft put oil in or reduce oil pressure when you want to phase the cab next I need to remove this turbocharger I do have another video on how turbochargers work so you might want to check that out here you can see is where the exhaust gases are going to flow down and we've got a vacuum actuated wastegate over here you can see this here is an oil line that comes in over here we've got another oil line here that comes from the timing cover over here that actually feeds it the oil and then there's a waste over here at the bottom that dumps it into the sump now over on the intake side here you can see we've got the intake from the air box and this goes to the intercooler there we go all right now we're going to remove the oil line and here's the other part of the oil line that I'm going to remove the 13-millimeter bolts to hold the turbocharger to the manifold which is actually integrated into the head now I'm going to remove the turbocharger whoa a little bit of weight to it and looking at the back of that turbocharger you can see here's the inlet for the exhaust this here is that flex line that drains the oil and this is the other input line for the coolant so turbochargers have both coolant and oil going to them and this is the band clamp that holds the exhaust side of the turbocharger to the intake side of the turbocharger and the two turbines living here with a shaft in the middle it has to be cooled and lubricated I'm going to go ahead and turn this engine over and take apart the bottom I do have my brother's really old pants here I don't know why he keeps wearing these I'm just going to put those down there so that it can absorb any oil oh there's oil all right so there's a lot of oil leaking here I got my wife's old dress okay so I kept turning the engine over and I got the cabs kind of stuck and see if I can break this whole freak yeah got it all right so next up I can remove all the eight millimeter bolts that go around this timing cover all right we're gonna go ahead and remove the timing cover now hey here's a look underneath that timing cover you could see this area here where they've strengthened it up to hold the engine mount taking a look at the engine design here you can see it's actually fairly simple you've got your dual overhead camshafts over here at the top of the engine a single slide over here and another slider over here with the tensioner on it that's powered by the camshaft we're gonna first start by removing these two tens for the timing chain tensioner all right here's what the chain attachment looks like you can see it's spring loaded over here and it's got this ratchet mechanism on it controlled by this here inside here you can see the little oil filter over here I'm going to take some of the oil and that goes to the turbocharger I believe this is also hydraulically assisted because there's a bunch of oil squirting out when you push it in all right now I'm going to remove these timing chain guides doesn't show like there's any wear on that okay remove the camshaft at the bottom and remove this tiny chain slide like this again these are plastic but it doesn't feel like there's anywhere on it and then I can remove the timing chain itself and with that with my cash shaft has dropped out because they were just held in by the chain the oil pump drives got this little slider on it with a tiny little spring over here all right let's see if we can get that oil pump out of here ah maybe we need to take the oil pan off next over here at the bottom of the engine one thing I do like what the Ford's doing is that they're using an aluminum oil PAD as opposed to say a plastic oil pan like in the newer models and they have a flat bottom so when you take out this engine when it fails it sits nice and flat it doesn't fall on your foot we'll go ahead and remove all the 10 millimeter bolts here to hold this oil pan to the block foreign taking a quick look inside of this Ford EcoBoost oil pad you can see it is pretty reinforced and somewhat strong I don't see any evidence of water inside of here like the previous owner told me so maybe water did not get enough chance to mix with oil here we can pop off that oil pump you can see this is the plastic pickup tube I don't see any debris in there or anything but taking a look at the bottom end of this Ford ecoboost engine you can see that Ford's using a balance shaft that's because four cylinder engines are naturally not balanced this is to help smooth out some of the vibrations furthermore I also see that they've done cross bracing over here between the main bearings which is good because these engines do produce a lot of power and it's good to have a strengthened up bottom end as opposed to just having those bearings mounted directly to the block all right I'm going to go ahead and remove these 14 millimeter bolts to hold this balance shaft assembly on you could see when the crankshaft spins this gear over here these two balance shafts spins in opposite directions to counter the forces to reduce vibration I'm going to continue taking off the bottom end here so we can get the crankshaft out before you flip it up to the top to get the head off I'm going to go ahead and remove these 15 millimeter nuts here that hold this ladder frame as well as the bearings themselves on all right time for the big gun well these better have been tight because they are main bolts for the bearings time for some breaker bar action now now we should be able to zip these nuts off see they look like nuts but they're actually a bolt all right now that this tray is loose I can go ahead and remove it here you can see the importance of having this ladder frame design it is a lot stronger than just putting main bearing bolts over here because they support each other both up and down and side to side the only thing is however this is made of aluminum I wish they made it out of steel it is pretty lightweight and looking at the main berries here I could see they're actually in pretty good condition you don't see many squared up or anything and I don't see any evidence of milk next up we've got the connecting rods over here and I'm going to remove they're an e-torx 12 millimeter and I'll go ahead and pop that off connecting rod bearings are pretty clean next up remove cylinder one and cylinder four and these connecting rod bearings are perfect as well I don't see any issue there that's going to remove this rear main seal over here and now I should be able to lift out this crankshaft I lost my toothbrush in one of these oil galleys but taking a look at this crankshaft you can see it's a standard four-cylinder Arrangement where you have the Pistons that are opposite for each other 180 degrees we've also got this giant gear here that's pressed on to drive the balance shaft other than that it's pretty simple forged crankshaft though it does feel a lot heavier than a normal four-cylinder car crankshaft that's because this engine is turbocharged and fetches a lot of power now we've got the bottom inner part we're going to turn it over and take off the head oh there's more mess now my brother's toothbrush did not follow at the bottom when I turned this engine back over so we're gonna have to take the head off to try to get it out now with the camshaft removed you can see that this uses a bucket style of cam on Direct valve action down here there's no roller rocker arm system but that also means you are going to manually have to do a valve adjustment when this engine gets old and worn out and these get all rattly but this is an ecoboost engine so we don't expect it to last that long anyways now the head bolts on these are a t-55 Torx socket all right I'm going to remove the head adding doing so my toothbrush popped out the bottom so I'm going to go ahead and use that to push the Pistons up the top here all right let's take a look at these Pistons here the one thing I noticed is how much carbon is built up on these Pistons look at those control rings they're all full of carbon tons of carbon buildup this one is not as bad and this one's got a lot of carbon too all right here I've got a piece of my wife's uh something rather pretty absorbent material so we're going to go ahead and clean off some of that oil and take a look at that oil ring so here's a look at piston number four you could tell that the carbon buildup from the top of the engine here this engine was definitely burning oil you can see some of the Rings here they're not C's but they are have a lot of carbon buildup on them even the oil control ring at the bottom here has a little bit of carbon buildup on them but it's still free to move okay I can actually take this out there is a bit of carbon in here but at least they do a move it's not completely clogged up and that's hence why I think the previous owner probably put a catch can on here just because of all the oil deposits that get inside of your engine especially with direct injection these engines tend to burn a lot more oil Additionally the connecting rod bearings actually look pretty clean there's no evidence that any water got into them now I don't notice that the Pistons have been re-gapped or anything there's no damage to them doesn't seem like they hit the cylinder head so it doesn't seem to be completely hydrolocked this engine probably could have been saved so here we've got all the components removed from the engine stand let's take a closer look at how they work and we're going to start at the bottom of the engine here where we have the oil pan nothing much to it just a cast piece of aluminum which is pretty strong and reinforced a lot better than the new plastic ones that Ford's coming up with and it's probably better than the stamped steel oil pan as well now sitting just inside of that oil pan is the oil pickup tube as well as the oil pump so if I go ahead and take that apart here here you can see just how that works this is going to rotate over here and it's got a star wheel that rotates inside of a star wheel and that's going to create oil flow and I don't notice any debris in here so this engine is definitely not blowing up now sitting just above that attached to the crankshaft is this balance shaft I'm gonna go ahead and open up this unit here here you can see the inner workings of this balance shaft assembly so essentially what we got here are two shafts that are going to rotate opposite from each other using these two smaller gears over here this large gear over here is driven by the crankshaft itself and these are going to rotate in opposite directions from the crankshaft to counter any vibrations inside here you got a big steel housing and the two has its own bearings that have to get lubricated by the oil system let's start at the bottom of this engine block here you can see this is where the oil is going to be drawn in through that oil pump as we send down this oil Galley over here to the oil filter to get filtered out if I take off that oil filter it's a standard canister style oil filter which I like all right let's get this oil filter housing off here I have a filter housing is pretty straightforward oil and oil out and over here we've got the oil pressure switch on the back side here we've got an integrated oil cooler we have coolant coming in and coming out to help cool down the engine oil at higher loads and once that oil is done being filtered it's going to head down here to the main oil Galley that runs along the block here which is going to send oil to the sprayers as well as the crankshaft bearings which are drilled down there on this way to tap off the oil supply in addition off the main oil supply you have another Galley that's going to run up here to lubricate the head now this here is where the positive crankcase ventilation system lives it's basically an oil separator with this baffle over here and the PCV valve over here that's going to send those Vapors directly into the throttle body and back into the intake this is kind of a weak spot because this is a direct injected engine and if any oil is not separated it's going to end up clogging up the intake now speaking of the air intake here you can see we've got a very simple intake there's no tumble control valves it's a single map sensor and a resonator over here and we've got the throttle body which is a drive-by-wire unit and it's actually surprisingly clean wow and this is just going to directly put boosted air into the intake and here we have the engine head you can see this side is the intake side each valve has its own intake Port so to speak and down inside of here are where the valves live you can see there's quite a long stem before it reaches the actual valve at the bottom here furthermore this here is where your direct injectors would plug in so looking into the combustion chamber you can see these ports here are where fuel is going to be sprayed directly into the intake now you're going to have to trust me here because it's really hard to see but these intake valves are completely clogged up with carbon and that's just a byproduct of the direct injection it's actually a very common issue on these ecoboost engine now carbon buildup is going to cause the air to be stifled as it's going down inside of the valve here and then you're going to get all kinds of performance issues the only way to fix that is to remove the intake and walnut blast out all of that carbon and clean it up but you're gonna have to keep doing that because it's just going to keep building back carbon take a look at the bottom of the cylinder head here again you can see just how dark and black it is just like the Piston heads that we saw again this is an indication that maybe this engine was burning a lot of oil now furthermore one of the other changes Ford made for the second generation ecoboost engine was water cooling this integrated exhaust manifold so you'll see that there's actually two ports over here where they've drilled in a water jacket and that's to allow the air to cool down before it goes into the turbocharger now another change they made with the Gen twos is they've made individual passages for each one of the four cylinders here so they can each pump their exhaust gas directly into the turbocharger as opposed to having them all group into one another big issue with the EcoBoost engines is that this exhaust manifold would start to leak now this exhaust manifold you can see here is integrated into the turbocharger housing so you basically have to replace the entire turbocharger when this starts to leak and it loses boost pressure and causes performance issues it's also obviously going to spill exhaust fumes down into your engine bay which isn't going to smell very good in addition the solenoids and electronics that control this vacuum actuated wastegate here are also a weak point on these EcoBoost engines and they're not really easy to get to inside the vehicle now back up at the top of the head here we do have our dual overhead camshafts and they each have variable valve timing but I did notice though is that this one here had a ton of plate it's not good and it probably caused a lot of rattling especially on Startup now the other camshaft over here features a special lobe that drives the high pressure fuel system the fuel system was also not a strong point on these two liter engines especially the low pressure fuel pump in the tank and kind of conk out as well as the high pressure fuel pump might also conquel because these things have to pressurize the fuel to a really really high pressure here's the flaw that's affecting some of the newer EcoBoost engines you'll see here they're actually using a semi-closed deck design where it's not completely open between the cylinder walls that's great for strength but it's not that good for cooling you could see in between the cylinder walls here they've dug a little trench here and cross drilled a hole between these cylinder walls here that's good for cooling because it'll allow coolant to exchange over to the other side and this very critical location between the two hot cylinder wall however on newer versions of this engine they've just made a little tiny trench in between here to allow that coolant crossover and then you've got your head gasket that sits on top of here essentially what that does is it it's a weak spot where coolant which is crossing over here can mix with your cylinder combustion and your oil and then you start blowing coolant out your exhaust and that's not good because now you basically need a new Block in order to correct that issue and that's a wrap on the Ford ecoboost engine now all the hardcore mechanical bits might actually be reliable on this engine it's all these add-on bolt-on pieces here that might cost you a pretty penny especially when the vehicle comes to high mileage unfortunately turbocharged overstressed engines are going to be around for a while until these oil companies here finally give up and we're mandated to drive skateboards make sure you subscribe if you want to see more videos just like this one

Channel: speedkar99

Views: 942,976

Keywords: FORD, ecoboost, reliability, broken, fix, repair, turbo, blown, turbocharger, lincoln, 2.0L, 4 cylinder, engine, motor, leak, coolant, head, gasket, design, focus, ST, fusion, f-150, raptor, ranger, maverick, escape, mkz, mkx, explorer, mustang, mkc, corsair, continental, failure, headgasket, teardown

Id: LEF1xGifeLM

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 05 2022