i done a oil change on the st170 that i picked up on sat morning... used ford filter and 4.3 litres of oil taking it to about 3mm over max on dipstick.... it was somewhere near there before i drained it too!
i have noticed ....more particularly tonight because i had the radio off in traffic that it sounds like a quite deisel on idle.... i actually thought it was the beetle tdi infront ...... i pulled over and check oil levels etc and could find nothing obvious the sound however is loudest near the cam pulleys..??? possible crank but unsure...

sounds same both cold and hot .... oil pressure never much bellow half way on guage and oil temp reads correctly used 5/30 comma oil

 

not so much an old clattery diesel but a modern diesel....almost sounds like a 1.4tdci fiesta quite quite but very much a diesel sound in the cabin and simular outside but less noticible unless bonnet open

 

there seems to be a big....yet simple.... problem with the st170 oil capacity spec in the ford books.... they say 4.25 with filter should be correct amount but in my car and also a few people i know who have had st170s say that brings it to somewhere like 6mm over the max mark on the dipstick.... so i have drained off some oil and so its is now bang on max mark

the engine noise;

took to a ford specialist today to get it checked out he sound it sounds perfectly healthy for a st170 and that the car overall is a perfectly good example and he stressed how clean and unmarked the alloys were for an st170

i already had the cambelt booked in for thursday with him anyways so i guess if anything IS a miss then he'll let me know :-s

 

The st170 has solid liters so they are no were near as quiet as one with hydraulic lifters. they have a noisey top end its normal. the alloys were not finished properly in the factory so eventually they will corrode really badly