Hello,

Much thanks and appreciation in advance for any help and/or direction you can give.

A friend of mine bought in 2017 A new Ford Focus ST. It has a 2.0l turbo engine. The car has been gently driven and mostly on the highway. It has about 100,000 miles on it. It started blowing white smoke and losing power. It was taken to a professional mechanic who spoke to multiple Ford dealership mechanics. Together they determined that the turbo was bad. The turbo was replaced with a used turbo (the claim, and the mechanic agreed, that there was only about 5,000 mi on the turbo), it was a $1,500 repair. After it was repaired the car was driven multiple times and ran for about 2 hours and seemed to be working properly. The car was picked up and on the way home from the shop it started losing power and blowing white smoke again. My friend decided to jump ship and he bought a used Acura ILX. The Focus ST is in mint condition except for this issue. I purchased it from him at a very reasonable price, expecting to either repair it or have it repaired. I am concerned that I don't have the tools or the skills to replace a head gasket, it is losing coolant. I am concerned about the cylinder head and/or block being warped or that there might be a crack in the cylinder head. These heads have an exhaust manifold that is permanently attached to the head in a single unit and apparently it restricts flow to cylinders 1 and 4 and is prone to cracking because of its design. Attempting to do the repair myself would be difficult because of positioning of the overhead cam correctly and also with setting the timing. I have a lot of tools but I don't have the precision tools necessary to do this job. The mechanic that originally replaced the turbo now says that he also does not have the tools to do a head gasket on this particular car. Most of the cars in that shop are classic hot rods and muscle cars.

My questions are;

Do you think the turbo is bad?
Do you think it's a head gasket issue?
Do you have a guesstimate on a price to repair this car?
Should I just seek a replacement engine instead?

Unfortunately, I don't know of a good mechanic in my area, NY State, an hour north of NYC, that works on cars like these regularly so I'm not sure where to turn out what to look for next. I'm hoping to get lucky and have there not be too serious an issue.

Thanks again, Matt