Engine Cooling System problems of the 1996 Mercury Cougar

I was driving and saw my low coolant light was on. Pulled into car parts company parking lot. Opened hood saw coolant on top of motor and underside of hood. Coolant was leaking from front of the intake manifold. Upon inspection realized the manifold is made of plastic. I attempted to stop the leak with plastic repair and a coolant system repair, no use. Had to limp the car to zender Ford in spruce grove, alberta. They are fixing the car at an estimated cost of $900. 00 no warranty or recall. Left me stranded 400 km's from my home.

I just purchased vehicle from used car lot. During my 3 mile trip home the car over heated and water vapor was coming in through air conditioning vents. When I stopped at my home, I could see steam coming from inside engine. When I opened the hood, I found that there was crack in a plastic part coming directly off of the engine block to a coolant hose. I went to several auto parts stores to identify the part and found it was a crack in the intake manifold water cross-over jacket causing coolant leak. The stores did not carry a replacement, so I called the Ford dealership. Ford does have a replacement part, actually they redesigned the whole intake manifold because of their poor design error. They also had extended the car warranty to 7 years to replace this part if/when failure occurs. The Ford replacement is an assembly, not part just the problem part, it costs $589. 17 and dealer installation of it costs $450. 00. Ford would not assist or give at all on the 7 year warranty extension to fix their obvious design flaw in the part and/or the whole assembly. Through on-line newgroups about this problem, junkyards cannot keep the old plastic part in their yards. I love the Cougar xr7 v8, but beware if this part hasn't been fixed with the new one, that you will at some point have to fix it.

Temperature gauge went up, car overheated. Took vehicle to independent shop, and technician stated that intake plastic manifold cracked.