A few more questions in here and I called Monday morning and they somewhat reluctantly agreed to take a look at it Tuesday morning. My wife took it in and two mechanics agreed "something" twernt right. The manager called Ford and was told they either hadn't lined the paint dots up on the flywheel / pressure plate or, they admitted, that some bad flywheels had inadvertantly made it into the market which could take up to MONTH to replace. Holy crap. Turns out the mechanic didn't know the parts were balanced and had to be indexed. How scary is that? The ONLY do transmissions. So he had it 180 degrees off. They re-did the install, the manager took a test drive ( he test drove the first time and passed it as a-ok ) and passed it again, claiming all fixed for sure this time.
Yes it's better but it's not fixed. It has a buzz around 4500-5000rpm that'll make your hand numb on the shifter. How could he miss that? Then he tells my wife that he ran a diagnostic to check the missing ( which wasn't there when the clutch went ) and found a trouble code for the intake manifold runner control being stuck shut. And my research says that can be a mother ranging from bad computer to partially tearing out a LOT of stuff to get to the part to repair or replace.
It's like I traded my soul for three great trouble free years and now the Devils here to collect
So now I have an appointment with a dynotune shop to track down the IMRC problem, hoping that I wont get slammed to bad on that. And hoping against hope that Im mistaking a rough engine for a driveline imbalance because I'm pretty nervous about the capabilities of the tranny shop at this point.
So one.. anybody had a IMRC problem before? Cost ranges? And, if you were me, would you keep taking the car back to the same tranny shop until they figured it out or cut your losses and try to find someone more competent to try to iron out the problems? Do I have a chance in hell ( my current address ) of finding a shop who can iron this kind of problem out without just throwing more parts at it? I want my Cobra back!
But how do I know when they are open or not? How much difference does it make if they are stuck shut ( which the code says they are on bank 2 ) I'd guess that they were doing something good when they work, but how much good? This car had 50000 when I bought it and until my clutch problem I really can't say I noticed any specific problems or thought it was running any slower than when we got it.
