I appreciate the input, Steve, and while I'm not a professional mechanic, I'm still gonna take a stab at it. The thing is, I don't like Fords in general and their 3.8 V6 in particular.
The car's only worth about a grand if it were running correctly, so no way I'm going to pay someone to fix it.
Besides, I've kept our Honda Del Sol (38 MPG) and Toyota RAV4 (30 MPG) running perfectly so I'm not gonna sweat selling a Ford POS to the yard ;-)
Steve Says,
Having a professional mechanic repair this vehicle would probably be close to $1000 if not more, so you are right that there really is no point in having someone repair it. My point was simply that it is a difficult repair and it's not something that just anyone can do. The 3.8L engines really were not very good, they had a lot of problems with head gaskets.
If you are going to try this yourself I do recommend that you either subscribe to an online repair manual or get the procedure from JustAnswer. This will really help you get this thing back together correctly. If you would like to try JustAnswer just type your question into the box below:
If you just want to get a good repair manual, here is a link to the one the I use and recommend. It is much better and more detailed than the ones you find in auto parts stores. Here is the link and good luck with your project!
