mjeff87

What color is your buzzer box, black or blue? If it's black it only buzzes with the key in. The blue box has the headlight alert.

CEL on the Focus turned out to be another vacuum line loose on the back of the engine. Fixed it in the work parking lot yesterday. Yay.

And after all of that, I had one little 2-wire electrical connector up in the engine bay without a home. I looked around for about 45 minutes trying to find out where it went. Finally figured out it went on the top of the trans body, near the selector mechanism. Which meant I had to take the battery, battery tray, air box and air intake tube BACK off to get to the sensor to plug it back in. That was a big kick in the gut after spending so much time putting it all back together.

With all that fixed, I got the new clutch installed (flywheel was smooth and shiny, all I did was hit it with some brake cleaner and wiped it clean). Then had to mess around with a tranny jack, 2 floor jacks and a bottle jack plus a couple pieces of 2X6 to try to wrestle the trans back home. It beat the heck out of me, hands down. Ended up having my buddy help me and it still took both of us about 30 minutes to get it back in. With that done, I had to reattach the entire subframe, install the new axleshafts, connect everything back up, reinstall the 2 trans mounts, put the suspension/steering/knuckles back in on both sides and bleed the throwout. Not a fun job, at all.

Well, got that job done (mostly). Ended up taking off work yesterday to finish it up and spent about 7 more hours on it. Finally got it pulled out around 4:30. Still have to clean up the garage/put all my tools away so I can get the Jeep back inside. That's on the priority list, because we had a really bad hailstorm here last Friday afternoon and the KJ was sitting out in the driveway (because the Focus and my wife's car were in the garage). My heart just sank as I heard and watched the quarter sized hailstones blast on it. Thankfully, no injuries to the Jeep, but alot of my landscape plants are hosed and so are all of the screens on my upstairs windows on the front of the house. My next door neighbor (literally 20 feet away from me) got the entire front of his house pounded. All of the siding looks like swiss cheese, and one of the window lentils on his garage window got blown off and down onto his daughter's car in the driveway. More of that may be coming here later on this week, too. Had to fix/replace a few other things along the way too. I mangled the CPS connector, so I yanked a couple spare ones out of the junkyard and re-pinned one of them. Passenger side axleshaft CV boot was dry rotted and just starting to sling grease out, so I got a new one of them to go along with the new driverside axleshaft I just replaced a few weeks ago. And I managed to pull apart that new driverside CV while trying to take it out, so I broke down and finally bought a pair of Oetiker clamp pliers and some new band clamps and fixed it back up. Also had to put in a new output shaft seal on the passenger side.

Awesome looking landscaping rylee I took yesterday off work to get the Focus put back together. This is a job that I will never do again. It took me most of the day (working alone and without a lift) to get it done, but I finally pulled it out around 4:30. Took it for a test ride, clutch was a little "stiff" but the engine idle was way high. Turns out a vacuum line on the back of the TB got pulled out somewhere along the way....easy fix. I need to bleed the throwout a bit more, I think there's still an air pocket in it, and might fiddle around with adjusting the shifter cables a bit. Brought it to work this morning, and it popped a CEL about 2 miles from work. Still runs fine, though, so I have no idea what it is and I can't pull the codes via the "blinking CEL sequence" like some other vehicles and I don't have a scanner. Might run it past the Advance Auto or somewhere after work to see if they can read the code for me. Oh, and one of my credit cards got hacked last week. Hacker tried repeatedly to purchase $8-10K worth of stuff at Best Buy over the last couple days, the card issuer shut the card down thankfully.

Got it jog...thanks! Glad I pulled 2 of the connectors out of the junkyard, I learned myself (and broke) the first one. Once I figured the mechanics out, I was able to unpinned the second one, pull the wires out of my broken one, and put it all back together.

Thanks. I'll give that a shot

So I munched up the connector end of the CPS on my Focus while dropping the transmission (CPS itself is fine though). I cut out 2 connectors with plenty of wires from the junkyard today, thinking I could de-pin one of them and install the connector body on my existing wires. I really don't want to cut/splice the wires considering it's the CPS and voltage is kinda sensitive. I got the connector body off but can't figure out how to get the wires out....anyone have a tip/trick to this? It's a 2-wire Ford weatherpak connector. Maybe it's not even possible?

Lol. I might end up pulling that control arm off when I try to stab it back in. That darn differential gets all kind of hung up on it and the subframe on the back side. I finally hit the one "sweet spot" with it yesterday, after about an hour of wiggling it and fidgeting around with a couple jacks under the trans and the engine and it just plopped out. I need to find that sweet spot again, just in reverse....and against gravity.....to get it back in. I asked the shop about a month ago for a rough estimate on doing the clutch for me, and they said anywhere between $9-1200. Now I know why they quoted it like that. Not a job I want to do again, ever. edit: according to Google images, that sensor I mungled up was indeed the CPS. Think I'm gonna swing by the junkyard tomorrow morning and grab a new-to-me one, for now.

Well, silly me decided to put a clutch in my Focus yesterday. I had no grand illusions of getting it all done in a day by myself, but holy heck I underestimated this job. It took me 5 hours just to get the trans out of the car.....and I sliced my 3rd finger on my left hand wide open in the process. After a few shop towels, a beer and a squirt of superglue I was able to get it to stop bleeding. I loaded it up in the back of the KJ and ran it down to the quarter car wash to blow some of the grime off of it (after spraying 2 cans of degreaser inside the bellhousing and scrubbing with a toothbrush and a bleeding finger). I accidentally pulled apart the brand new CV shaft I just installed, so I have to fix that. And the boot is torn on the passenger side CV, so I need to replace that axle and output seal (that I bought a couple weeks ago from the dealership for $27). I also smashed the bits out of some kind of sensor on the front of the bellhousing, engine side (some sort of CPS maybe?), so I need to figure out what it was and go get a new one of them. THEN I can install the new clutch and throwout and try to get the trans back up onto the engine. I had to lower the whole subframe just to get it out, I have no idea how I'm going to get it back in. Work will re-commence on Saturday, should be fun! Pics are before and after the wash job. It ain't squeaky clean, but it's cleaner than it was. Quite heavier than I thought it would be for a FWD transmission, and it's a very unbalanced weight because of the differential on the back side. That's the heavier side.

The root beer is awesome, if you've never tried it before. NYF is/was the original in that market and still the best IMHO. can't comment on the others though....

Is that a quilting rack of some kind? I swear I've seen something like that in my past family history....I think.

Nice.. I've got that exact freezer in my garage, but it's full of food right now, lol. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Budget unit on left.....German unit on right.

Lol. I picked up a different unit from NAPA today for $70. It's ABS plastic versus the el cheapo pot metal Chicom unit that came with the kit, and is wholly superior in every aspect. It's also German made. I'll be plopping that one in tomorrow. I'll use the janky one as a doorstop or something creative. As much of a PITA this job is gonna be, I want to never have to do it again.

Wow.....I never thought getting a new clutch for this thing would be such an, experience. Went to my local indy parts house over the weekend to get one. Turns out they could "special order" one, with an added shipping fee, for $385 WTF? They printed off the quote and gave it to me, said to hang onto it just in case I needed it, when I told them I wasn't about to put a $400 clutch into a $300 vehicle and would get one somewhere else. Checked multiple places, including Rock Auto and Amazon, and it turns out that's just about the going rate for a clutch kit for this thing. I ended up finding a ching-chong kit from one Advance Auto store about 40 miles south of me (the only one that actually had one in stock anywhere.....) for $185. I used some speed perks and a discount code and picked it up for $150. It's a Carquest "brand", and most likely will self destruct within 2 years (the slave/throwout is my worry, not the actual clutch disc or housing). I don't plan on having this car around much more than a year or so, maybe, so I'm going to toss it in tomorrow and see what happens. I'm debating on picking up a brand name slave/throwout from somewhere for $75 or so and just not using the el cheapo one that came with the kit. I might just do that for peace of mind. Anyway, my plan is to drop the trans tomorrow and stab this new stuff in. Should be a fun job....

My old MJ may or may not be running around now with 2 of the 3 little 10mm's holding the ECU in place.

I had a timing chain slapping in my old 2.5L, and it didn't sound anything like that. It was a very rhythmic clica-CLACK-clica-CLACK sound that increased frequency with RPMs. To me, that doesn't sound chain related. I'd be thinking water pump impeller also. Or grab the A/C pulley and see if it wobbles any.

And on a much more serious note....I heard on the radio that beer manufacturers are facing a shortage of CO2 now, thanks to the 'Rona. Might be time (again) to stock up on a few extra cases.

^^^yeah, that. Several years ago I was driving home from work, stopped by the supermarket on the way and picked up a case of cans. Had them just sitting on the front passenger seat. About a mile from my house I got T-boned at a particularly bad intersection (at least one accident a month there, the county FINALLY put a light in a couple months ago). That case of beer turned into a deadly object. It hit the side of me, then flew into the dashboard/windshield and ripped open. Cans went EVERYWHERE, and at least 3 of them popped open. Literally soaked the entire interior, plus me in the process. It made for a very interesting time when the cops showed up, lol. Now all of my beer either goes on the floor in the back seat, or if it has to be in a seat area, it gets belted in.

It's been awhile since I had my old 2.5, but from looking at your pics I'm thinking you had the first belt routed wrong. It should come off the right side of the PS pump pulley like you had it, but then it should go down and wrap clockwise around the HB instead of around the water pump like you show it. Then it would wrap about 75% around the HB, back up and over the water pump pulley counter-clockwise then over to the alternator. I see a new alternator there.....did you replace it or have a shop do it? I'd wager that the belt got re-installed wrong. It's not a hard thing to do to route a belt wrong......every time I take the belt off/on my Focus, I have to concentrate to get it back on the right way. To the point where I draw a diagram of it before I take it off. edit: I found a pic. The red trace is how I think your old belt was routed (I think).....the highlighted trace is how it should be routed.

None of my junk may be worth anything, but at least they are clean...inside and outside

Not much to report here on the Focus....just been putting gas in it and running it all over the place. Throwout bearing is getting louder (only when cold started, once warmed up it's quiet, but it's still dying a slow death). And I've stopped the engine oil leaks but STILL have a leak from somewhere on the backside of the transmission that I can't find. I figure when I drop the trans to replace the clutch/TO bearing I'll be able to inspect the back of the case and find the leak source while I have it lying out on the garage floor. I might do that next weekend, I'm off Thursday so I can try to get it all done in a day, but if I don't I can run the KJ to work Friday and then finish up over the weekend. Need to start gathering parts.

^^^^