Mondeo Mk 3 - Swirl flaps

Little Mickey

I’ve been hearing a lot about issues with “swirl flaps” on early Mondeo Mk3 models, 1.8 Duratec – has anybody ever replaced or removed them?
If so, can you tell me about your experience – reckon it’d be too big a job for a home mechanic who would normally be capable of changing things like suspension parts, brakes, etc?
Any tips on whether they should be replaced or just removed altogether – I’ve seen that they can be just removed but what would this do engine performance wise?

Harcrid

The flaps on my car were starting to get noisy so I had them removed completely by my mechanic while he was doing a thermostat change for me.

The metal bar holding the flaps in had broken and one of the flaps was almost ingested into the engine which means I was very lucky.

You can either replace the flaps or remove them completely like I did. It's been a year since I did it and I have not noticed any detrimental effects on either performance or MPG.

A lot of people have done this job themselves at home. I guess it just depends how competent you feel you are. Make sure you do the job fairly soon if you are noticing rattling in the engine bay. See below for more reading on the issue.

http://www.talkford.com/topic/97564-important-inlet-manifold-failure-in-graphic-detail/

Leonard Hofstadter

As far as I know, the swirl flaps are there for emissions control at idle, so removing them may increase non CO2 related issues.

I'd still get rid of them though, they do not alter performance or mpg in any way, and there is the added comfort of knowing that you're not going to write off your car and engine because of the flaps.

Even if the emissions went slightly up, it would not be enough to make the car fail the NCT, and anyway, giving the car a good thrashing on its way to the NCT will more than cancel out any increase in emissions due to the flaps being gone.

Harcrid

With regards to the NCT, mine passed easily with the flaps removed.

Little Mickey

Thanks for the replies folk.
OK I have my NCT next month so I'll leave them for that just to be safe (emissions wise), I'll get going after that though - yeah I think I'll just remove them also. I'm not sure about going at them myself, I'll see what a mechanic will quote me first.

Little Mickey

Thanks for the replies folk.
OK I have my NCT next month so I'll leave them for that just to be safe (emissions wise), I'll get going after that though - yeah I think I'll just remove them also. I'm not sure about going at them myself, I'll see what a mechanic will quote me first.

Oh just a question - I don't seem to have any abnormal noise coming from the engine but captainspeed you say about them being there for some emissions improvement thingy when the engine is idle - my engine does not rev so smoothly when idle, it can sometimes be swinging about 100 or 150 rpm up/down (so sometimes I can be jerking along in slow traffic!), is this (possibly) a warning sign?