Lock & Unlock

This post again about Ford Taurus 2006 (as of today ~171000 miles). While officially it is still mine, my son mostly drives it nowadays. On one of his trips (either Berkeley or maybe Oakland), there was an unsuccessful attempt to burglarize the parked car. Nothing was stolen but the car door lock was irreparably broken.  At the photo below you can see it.

So there was the need to replace this lock. On eBay, I have found a lock service package which suites our car. That package allows assembling the lock so existing car key will fit. Assembling the lock and replacing the old lock with the new one was relatively an easy task but as usual with some caveats. On the photo below, you can see the kit and all the tools needed for the job.

Apart from the kit, there was a need in the next set:

• Vernier Caliper (to measure existing key for recreating lock steps codes). Given the fact that steps differences are more than 1 mm, a good ruler may work as well.
• The hook custom made out of inexpensive awl.
• Philipps screwdriver.
• Ratchet with 7mm socket and extender.

Assembling the lock and fitting the key was straightforward. I just need to follow enclosed instruction.

The package is universal: not all packed elements were needed, but instruction gives enough details to understand what to use and what not to for your model. 

Next step was replacing the old lock with the new one. First  I have found this video. As all videos from 1aauto.com it is excellent and all that you need to remove and install back Ford Taurus door panel. 

 

But, alas, that video tells nothing about lock replacement. So I have found another one:

While it is not well polished as the first,  it contains some very valuable tips. Based on that video I may describe next steps to replace the door look (assuming door panel already removed):

1. Unscrew with 7mm sockets two bolts holding the door handle. That will make handle loose but not enough to take out the lock.

2. The door handle has a metal rod attached. The bottom end of this rod is secured with plastic clip to the door wall. On the snapshot below (I made it out of the second video)  you can see that clip (left bottom part of the picture) opened up. To open it up I used the metal hook, which I showed early. 

After that, I moved the handle out far enough to get access to the lock.

3. Then there was the need to remove e-clip from the back of the lock cylinder and take out lock lever.

4. The last step was to move to the left metal clip, which secures lock on the door. The snapshot below ( from the second video: many thanks to its creator) shows exactly where it is.

The new lock installation is straightforward:

1. Putting new lock into the place.
2. Securing it with the metal clip.
3. Putting the lock lever back to the lock cylinder.
4. Securing lever on the cylinder with e-clip (either from the kit or old one).
5.  Screwing back two bolts into the door handle.
6. Putting the bottom end of the rod into the plastic clip and closing the clip.
7. Installing the back door panel.

Job is done! 

Keep it Cool!

Last year my 2006 Ford Taurus (~157 000 miles) started to loose some coolant. Mechanic, while performing  regular maintenance service, told me it is due to replace water pump. Should I invest ~ 600$ in repair or save some money and do that myself? After some hesitation I decided to proceed myself. First of all I collected as mush information as possibly of what to do and how. Two YouTube clips came exceptionally useful. This one is about the whole process.

Second one is about changing serpentine belt tensioner. Even if there is no need to change it, one need to remove belt and all related components to get access to the water pump.

Both these clips are probably all what you need to know to replace water pump on the Ford Taurus 1996-2006 year. I myself cannot add much to that apart of telling some additional tips regarding tools used.

•  From my experience set of metric wrenches 8,10,13,15 and the same set of sockets gives enough flexibility to unscrew and screw back all bolts of this project. Just pay an attention that 13 mm socket has to be deep. Regular short socket will be not good for some bolts mounting water pump.
• To unscrew and then put back belt tensioner there is need in torx bit. Unfortunately second video mistakenly states that bit has to be T27 size. This is wrong.  For me size T50 worked well.
• Second video shows nice tip of attaching bigger wrench to the 15 mm, making release of tensioner easy. Like this:
      
•  That worked for me, apart of the fact that due to my inexperience 15 mm wrench slipped out of my hand and fell down. I had a trouble to get it back. To avoid such a mistake again I put some tape on the joint. Because of that the pair of wrenches worked as single tool. After the job done it was easy to remove tape and separate wrenches.
  
   
• One of dis-assembling steps is to detach heater hose from the water pump. That sounds easy, but... I tried to pull hose as hard as I can without any success (later on I found that big buildup at the end of water pump pipe, as seen on first picture, was the cause) . Then I watched first video one more time and at 1:47 found the answer. Mechanic used special hook to separate hose form the water pump pipe. I made myself  similar out of inexpensive awl. That helped.
  

So here is the conclusion. It is doable to replace water pump even if you are inexperienced mechanic. You just need the garage, some inexpensive tools and online access to order parts and find proper info.