Looking at an '04 Taurus SES with 36K miles for purchase. Asking 4500. Used car dealer. Ad says it has 3.0 24V DOHC engine, and open hood photo in ad verifies this. Problem is - there are no "24V DOHC" badges on either front fender. Even more disturbing - punched in VIN, and says it has the 3.0 Vulcan 12V. I'm figuring this is not the original engine. My big concern - car has 36K, but the engine could have much more than that. Wondering if there's any way to track that. Here is VIN: 1FAFP55214G199978. Any other thoughts? Thanks.

 

I've seen Tauruses with the DOHC engine and no fender badging on them. It's also possible that somebody took them off. Unless you pay for the VIN decoding, you get a basic vehicle build decoding. If I put the VIN in for my 2015 F-150 Lariat, it tell me that it's an XL with a 6.5' bed and not a Lariat with a 5.5' bed. It also list all of the available gear ratios, not the just 3:15's that it has. It also list both 23 & 36 gallon fuel tanks, not just the 36 gallon that it actually has. Heck, our 2001 Taurus SES w/DOHC came from the factory with SE badging on it. Go figure. Best thing to do is go physically look at it.

 

Many thanks for the valuable info. What you describe may well explain why the VIN report says the car has 200K mi. on it. But - closer inspection of the photo in the ad told me that it's not a Duratec, but a Vulcan, so I decided to pass on this one. We currently drive an '03 Sable w/Duratec, and it's got enough power for our needs, but we don't want to go "backwards", to an engine with less than what we have. So - we'll just keep looking. Thinking about a Fusion....just that the stories I hear re the 6-speed tranny make me jumpy. Thanks again.

 

It's not a power house, but if maintained, the vulcan is a 300,000+ mile engine and you really have to try hard to kill it. It's been around forever and in everything from Taurus/Sable, Aerostar, Rangers and such. We have a 2016 Fusion w/1.5 Ecoboost. Average 30+ MPG city/highway and 35-40 MPG highway. At 40,000 miles, it hasn't missed a beat.