The Taurus SHO
60,000 Mile Maintenance:
Another Perspective

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[Note: This article was originally published by the SHO Registry in 1995.]

Over the past few years, there have been a number of articles in the SHO Registry about the 60,000 mile maintenance. A few articles and many letters discussed the ins and outs of adjusting the valves, changing the timing belt, finding a good dealer or shop to do the work, and so on. I read and re-read all these articles as my '91 SHO approached the dreaded 60,000 mile mark, comparing it all to the owner's manual and shop manual. I visited several dealers in the area and talked to their service people. Finally, I decided to go ahead and do it myself. My experiences, of course, were quite a bit different from the sterile procedures described in print, and they might have an influence on somebody else who is facing the same decisions.

My SHO has been my pride and joy for the past four years. It's box stock and has needed little in the way of repairs. I've had all maintenance work (except oil changes) done in Ford dealers. Like a lot of guys, when I was younger I did most of my own maintenance, so I'm familiar with the dirty side of the hood. As I've grown older, however, I've let the pros handle more and more of the work.

The 60,000 mile check, though, had me a bit concerned. I couldn't find a Ford dealer around here that I could trust. Every single dealership handed me a xeroxed copy of a standard package they did on all Fords, from Festivas to F150's, at 30,000 mile increments. It included things like oil and coolant changes, new spark plugs (at 30,000 miles??), alignment checks, and so on. It did NOT include valve adjustment or timing belt replacement. When I asked about them, two service writers said "You've got hydraulic valves". Two others said "It don't make no difference, all Fords get the same service". Needless to say, NONE of the service writers knew anything about a SHO's requirements.

Finally I found a dealer who had a head mechanic who was actually familiar with the SHO. I was going to make an appointment with them until the guy said that the valves never need adjustment and that I should just run it till the timing belt breaks. So much for that place!

I reviewed the Registry's articles on the valve adjustment and timing belt replacement one more time and decided that I could handle the job. It looked like an 8-10 hour procedure for somebody that knew what they were doing, maybe three days for somebody stumbling through it the first time. I ordered the SHO Shop's 60,000 mile maintenance kit, stocked up on oil and other necessities from the local parts store, and marked the appropriate sections in both the Goody Book and the Taurus shop manual. As a military member, I could use a bay in the auto hobby shop on base, which turned out to be a godsend.

The SHO Registry's article by Art Tiroly described the valve adjustment process as "not difficult but it is time-consuming". I disagree. Changing the timing belt and adjusting the valves are long, complicated, and difficult tasks. If you break them down into shorter, simpler steps, they are easier to understand. Actually carrying some of these steps out, however, could try the patience of Job.

For example, an instruction in the manual might say something like "Remove the frammistat". It assumes, of course, that you know what a frammistat is, where it's located, and how to go about removing it. Invariably, the thing is stuck in some impossible-to-reach location and you have to invoke all your secret powers as The Amazing Rubber-Man in order to get to it. This especially applies to virtually anything on the backside of the engine next to the firewall.

Another "challenge" I faced was that my car is a California-spec model, which means it has lots of air and vacuum hoses that aren't mentioned in the shop manual. These hoses don't make themselves known, of course, until you're straining your back trying to lift the manifold off the engine and it's not about to come. If you have a California car, make some notes about what kinds of hoses there are and where they go.

The biggest problem for me was that there were a couple of items that were simply not mentioned at all in the manual. One example is that in the timing belt change, instruction 21 says to remove the crankshaft pulley/harmonic balancer with a certain puller. What it neglects to say is that you first have to remove the 19mm bolt which holds it on the crankshaft. This bolt was last tightened by the Hammer of Thor, and to get it off you need to use a 3/4" drive pneumatic impact wrench. Or, for those who are pneumatic-tool-challenged, you'll need at least one friend and a big breaker bar. It's one of those things that are obvious once you're doing the work, but easy to miss when you're reading over the manual beforehand. Fortunately, the auto hobby shop had the tools I needed to get that sucker off.

Another thing that was glossed over came just a few steps later in the "Installation" section. At instruction 6, after installing the new timing belt, the manual says to re-install the lower timing belt cover, then the pulley/harmonic balancer. It neglects to say that you should first install the keyed crankshaft washer (flanged side out), THEN the timing belt cover and pulley. If you stupidly mix them up by installing the cover, washer, and pulley (in that order), you could break your cover and strip the threads off the 19mm bolt while trying to get the pulley to go that last 1/4 inch onto the crank. Which, of course, is exactly what I did. I was lucky, however: the threads on the crankshaft were fine, and the SHO Shop sent me a new cover and bolt (more on that later), so this flub resulted in no expensive damage. Again, you should take careful notes of what you take off your engine and how it's supposed to go back on! That washer isn't mentioned at all in the instructions.

One last item was the oil drain plug and oil filter. I've been going to Jiffy Lube every 3,000 miles and was generally satisfied with them. However, it appears that the Jiffy Lubes in the Baltimore-Washington area use a "one size fits all" socket wrench to remove the drain plug. The result was a totally rounded-off head on the plug and an oil filter that was so tight it almost had to be chiseled off. The managers of the auto hobby shop said this was common among Jiffy Lube and other quick-change places. Looks like I'll be changing my own oil from here on out.

The Ford mechanic who said the valves never need adjustment wasn't too far off. Most of the valve clearances were smack in the middle of the allowable range. One valve was outside of spec and four others were at the loose end of the range. The timing belt looked like it was good for another 10-20,000 miles, but you never know. The auxiliary belts and spark plugs were at death's door. I bought new radiator hoses, but the old ones looked great, so now I've got some spares.

I found something else to add to our lore of lousy dealers. Some time ago I asked a dealer to clean my fuel injectors. He evidently charged me $65 to dump a bottle of injector cleaner into the gas tank, because those injectors had never been touched.

Other than the extremely tight confines, unfamiliarity with some of the parts, tools, and procedures, and a couple of key omissions in the manuals, I didn't have too many problems. I took my time, made a lot of errors, but by double-checking everything I was also able to un-make all the mistakes. After 34 hours of labor, the car started right up. Everything works, everything is tight, and there are no missing or left-over parts. Amazing.

The 60,000-mile kit from the SHO Shop was pretty complete. It had new timing and accessory belts, the tool to adjust the belt tension, a package of assorted shims, the tools you need to remove and insert the shims, new air, oil, and fuel filters, new plugs, new thermostat, and RedLine fuel injection cleaner and water wetter. I also got new spark plug wires, which was a good idea since the old ones looked really tired. The SHO Shop's last ad in the Registry mentions an instruction video, but it isn't completed yet. I called them a couple of times when I couldn't figure out how to do something (the "frammistat" syndrome) and they invariably helped me through it. When I called after breaking my lower timing belt cover, Vadim couldn't get one from Ford quickly enough, so he sent me the one off his own car! You can't beat service like that.

So, was doing it myself worth all the effort? I would say a qualified yes. From a strictly financial perspective, it wasn't worth it. I spent a total of $516 including all the parts and the auto shop fees. I don't know what a dealer would have charged, so I can't say how much I saved. The sad thing is that the dealers around here didn't seem to know how much it would have cost, either! On about day 4 of the project, the wife decided that spouse neglect warranted a shopping trip to Nordstrom's; her expenditures are NOT included in the above total.

The key issue for me is that I know that the valves, belts, filters, and plugs were done and were more or less done right. I don't have to worry about the qualifications of the guy who did the work or whether I'd have to bring it back to the dealer two or three times to get stuff corrected. And that, to me, is what made all the effort worth while.