Hi,

Does anyone know why early mondeo/focus 2.0 zetecs have a 1.2mm headgasket, and later ones 0.6mm?
I haven't stripped my early engine yet, but i have a late (2004) new bottom end, and am not sure which headgasket will be correct.
My head is the magnesium cover type, and the pistons appear similar down the plug hole.
I don't fancy ending up with an excessive comp ratio from mismatching head/gasket/block.

Thanks for any info,

Dave

Why are you stripping the engine? If the engine is suspect it's probably far cheaper to replace than rebuild

The material the gasket was made from was totally different, guess it was just one of Fords updates, never heard of a problem. Mix and match components and you could possibly end up with a small compression ratio increase but you should have no issues with valve/piston contact unless you use a really hot cam.

Only way to tell for certain is to do a dummy build and check the volumes.

There are several other minor differences between the very early Blacktops and later ones, none make any difference to fitting the engine in a kit. Off the top of my head the later ones have fewer core plugs, a different hole machined in the head for the temp sender (instead of in the stat housing) and the early ones had 2 idler pulleys on the cam belt, the later ones had only one.