new 11/18/02, updated 12/18/02
Tim,
I would like to report one more cam failure to the list. Bill Damhoff asked me to report that about a year and a half ago he lost the motor in his 96 SHO. The first shop couldn't diagnose the "ticking" sound, and by the time they were through with it, it was no longer running. He was lucky enough to find a used engine from a local salvage yard, and had about $6,000 in replacing the engine. One interesting piece of info, the salvage-yard core-charge for his bad motor was only $150, so he kept it. I went over to his house the other night and showed him witch cam gear it was that went, and he said that the shop never did tell him what the exact cause was. He reported it to Ford, but didn't get much of an answer. He didn't even realize that this was a problem with a LOT of these cars. Add 1 more the "the list".
Thanks,
Corey Wilkins
Hi,
I have a 96 SHO which had the cam failure happen in the summer of 2000. At the time we researched the problem and found nothing, it appears a lot has happened since then. Our cam failure happened on a trip through Iowa. We had no idea what happened and took it to the nearest Ford dealership. They replaced modules and other things and would take it out and run the thing until it wouldn't go any faster, around 70mph. After 3 weeks, nothing had been fixed and they'd ran up a few hundred dollar bill. My dad drove to the shop with a trailer, picked up the car and took it to the local Ford dealership in Sterling Illinois, this dealership was pretty helpful with the whole situation. They ran a compression test and realized right away that one side of the engine had no compression, the first dealership apparently had overlooked this minor detail. They tore it apart and realized what had happened and told us the engine was basically trash. This was at around 80,000 miles. They helped us find a used engine in a totaled car in Missouri, it had about 50,000 miles on it. We had that engine installed. Total cost to us was around $6,000. I still have the car, it has about 112,000 miles on it, so about 82,000 on the engine. We also still have the old destroyed engine sitting in our garage if that would be of any help. My name is Tom, my dad Bill owns the car. You can reach him at:
VIN = 1FALP54N5TA239544
I am not sure of the exact history of the car. My parents bought the car in the fall of 97 from Don Mullery Ford in Dixon Illinois. I believe it was some sort of program car before we bought it, the dealership owned the car for quite a while and the owner of the dealership used it as his personal vehicle sometimes I think. I don't know if anyone else owned the car before this dealership did. Please let me know how to get involved with the class action suit. I have no idea how these things work but I know we spent $6,000 and had to also buy a new car to take its place during the months it was being repaired, and it'd be nice to get a little back.
Thanks,
Tom Damhoff