Mondeo Mk3 rear droplink replacement

Disclaimer: I am a complete amateur at this stuff. Please do your own research and use your own common sense. I'm not responsible for any damage you do to yourself or to your car. I'm just sharing my own experiences here for the hell of it :)

This was several weeks ago and I’m forgetting the details now but, anyway, it’s all covered in a very good TalkFord Wiki here: “Droplink Replacement – Rear”

I had the suspension knocking noise (more like a loud rattle) coming from the rear driver side for quite some time, and it happened when going over even very small bumps and dips in the road. Apparently, worn out droplinks (anti roll bar links) are a common cause of this on high mileage cars like mine, so I bought two replacements. These were made by “TRW” and the part number was JTS457.

I did soak the nuts holding the old droplinks on with penetrating fluid for a few hours first but maybe leaving them overnight would have been better because everything was still quite nicely seized up. I also found it very difficult to get enough leverage / force on the ball joint part of the old droplink with the Allen key and only managed to do the driver side one in the end…

For the passenger side (with the still good droplink) I could feel that the Allen key was going to round off the hex recess if I kept trying at it, so I’ve had to leave that one in place… Bugger!

The nut on that side will probably need to come off with an angle grinder, but I have more pressing things to do at the moment so it will have to wait. (Note to self… remember to loosen the lower nut while the link is holding everything steady before you go cutting away the rounded off top nut! )

The new TRW droplinks have a flattened edge on the ball joint parts so you can choose to fit and remove them using two spanners rather than the one spanner and Allen key. Much more sensible, I think.

One slightly strange thing about the TRW replacement droplinks, however, was that they came with 5/8” nuts rather than the 15mm nuts that are on the original Ford parts. I didn’t think anyone still made things using imperial units…

Happy 120th !

Shortly after doing this job, the car made it to 120,000 miles (okay okay, 193,000 km then).

Fairly normal for today’s cars I guess, but I remember when I started driving this would have been an unusually high mileage for a car to reach; even if the engine could take it, most cars were a pile of rust before they could make it this far!

Mondeo Mk3 handbrake adjustment (keyhole bodge method)

Disclaimer: I am a complete amateur at this stuff. Please do your own research and use your own common sense. I'm not responsible for any damage you do to yourself or to your car. I'm just sharing my own experiences here for the hell of it :)

I had to adjust the handbrake a couple of weeks ago in readiness for the car’s MOT. It would have been a failure otherwise as there was a lot of free play in the handbrake and it took a total of eight ‘clicks’ to get the thing fully engaged.

( Some Mk3’s have an automatically adjusting handbrake which I’ve heard is not very good, but fortunately the one on my ‘54 plate Mk3 is the manually adjusted type ).

You take up the slack on the cables going to the rear wheels by tightening up a 16mm adjuster nut on the equaliser bar that the cables are attached to; this is located above the heatshield (a dimpled metal sheet) which is fixed above the middle silencer box. I managed to reach this area of the car without having to jack it up but it probably would have been easier if I had done so.

The heatshield is held on with 10mm nuts and the Haynes manual says that you should remove this, or slide it right out of the way, so you can then hold the other side of the adjuster mechanism steady with a 6mm spanner while tightening the adjuster nut. So please follow that correct advice and do it the right way, okay?

For myself, I could see that other bodgers before me had just removed one heatshield nut and then bent the rear offside corner of it down far enough to be able to access the adjuster. So that is what I did too. The equaliser bar and 16mm adjuster nut is thus revealed…

I had to use a deep 16mm socket on this and also, as I opted for this ‘keyhole bodge’ method, a very long extension and universal joint as follows…

I checked that the handbrake mechanisms on both rear wheels were not seized up before making any adjustments (get someone to watch them as you engage the handbrake, or point a video camera at them if working solo). Then you can adjust the nut… with the handbrake released, of course.

You are supposed to tighten the nut until “there is clearance of 1 mm between one of the rear caliper’s handbrake levers and its stop”. I’m not sure how much clearance I ended up with but after two or three full turns on the adjuster nut I had a nice firm handbrake which only took four to five clicks to fully engage, so I was happy ( the MOT tester was too! )

Mondeo Mk3 oil pressure sensor replace

Disclaimer: I am a complete amateur at this stuff. Please do your own research and use your own common sense. I'm not responsible for any damage you do to yourself or to your car. I'm just sharing my own experiences here for the hell of it :)

My Mondeo Mk3 is such a well behaved, polite old girl… she always waits until I have finished up on a contract before telling me there is something wrong. Last year the ignition coil pack died just two days after contract end, and this year the same immaculate timing but with an apparent oil pressure issue; the low pressure light suddenly came on while driving along and despite having plenty of oil in the engine.

A quick search for possible causes included:

1.  Of course… low oil. Nope! I also visually checked the top of the engine through the filler cap and everything was well coated in oil. Engine sounded fine too.
2.  Faulty oil pump. Likely need to remove engine to fix.  Please God no…
3.  Faulty pressure relief valve. I’d have to take the inlet manifold off all over again. Please God no…
4.  Faulty pressure sensor. Easy and cheap to fix. Please let it be this!

The inimitable and over-caffeinated (?) American, Scotty Kilmer, has a rocking video on pressure switch replacement on a Honda. So consider this a quiet Englishman’s equivalent for a Mondeo Mk3 and go pour yourself a nice cup of tea and put a little Mozart on… okay?

The pressure switch is easily accessible and is situated just to the right of, and above, the oil filter. Here it is shown with the connector already removed...

You will need a deep 21mm socket to remove this... I was lucky enough to already have a 21mm spark plug socket that fitted very well. I changed my oil and filter at the same time but you could change just the switch if you wanted to… you will lose a little oil in the process of course.

The replacement sensor/switch I bought was made by “ERA” and is part number 330029. This one has some solid red sealant on the threads, but if you get one that doesn’t have this I am told that you should put some high temperature silicone sealant on the threads before fitting it.

I also cut a millimetre or two of the green plastic off of mine so that the socket fitted onto it better...

Clumsily, I managed to round off the sump plug even more than it already was when I was taking that off…

So I put a new one of those on too. That was part number 333590091, made by “Guide Pro”, and it has a M14 x 1.5 thread with a 13mm nut. Use a ½ inch socket on it though for a tighter grip but, yes, it’s easy to round it off if you’re not careful!

I treated myself to a low range torque wrench (5 to 25 Nm) for this job as I do have a tendency to want to overtighten things. This piece of kit covered both the pressure switch (15Nm) and the sump plug (28Nm) nicely…

Here’s the new pressure sensor/switch and oil filter fitted…

And the good news is that the oil warning light is now staying off. Yay!