Doing head and intake swap, need shopping list, help me out.

Plan on 3 days to do the job if you haven't done it before.

Day one gets the heads off in 4-6 hours. The A/C Compressor comes off with lines still connected. Mark all the electrical, smog and vacuum lines with tags to help you remember where to re-connect them.

Day two gets all the gasket surfaces scraped off extra clean and the heads dropped off at the machine shop if you are going to have them reconditioned. Time here is another 4-6 hours. Whatever you do, don't skimp on cleaning the gasket surfaces. New gaskets need to seat against bare metal and not the residue left from the old gaskets in order to seal leak free. This is the most time consuming and tiresome part of the job. Look for little things that need to be replaced like the short hose from the thermostat hosing to the water pump, damaged vacuum lines and hose clamps that are rusted or broken.

Day three starts when you get the heads back from the machine shop. This is the time to pick up all the little odd pieces you found needing replacement on your day two inspection/cleanup. Plan on 6-8 hours to reinstall the heads and reconnect everything. Plan on an additional 2 hours to troubleshoot/adjust everything.

Now for some practical tips:

Plan on cutting the thermostat to water pump hose, or removing the thermostat housing. Also plan on removing the distributor to get clearance to remove the intake manifold. Remove #1 spark plug, stick your finger in the spark plug hole and crank. When your finger gets air moving past it, stop cranking. Turn the engine until the timing marks line up with the pointer. Now you can pull the distributor out.

You'll need new head bolts - get ARP bolts ($40) or studs ($93, maybe more). All the bolts get antiseize under the bolt heads, and everything but the short head bolts get it on the threads. You need Teflon pipe dope or ARP sealant to coat the threads of the short head bolts. The short bolts go into the water jacket and will seep coolant if you don't use the sealant.

My favorite trick that saves time and effort is the stay in place gasket. Be sure that you scrape (don't use a wire brush) all the old gasket material off, then clean all the surfaces with acetone or MEK.

When the surfaces are clean, use weather strip adhesive on the head to manifold surface, and on the side of the gasket that mates to the head. Follow the instructions on the tube or can and when it gets tacky, press the gasket down on the head.

Clean the area where the rubber rails mount to the block in front and in the rear with more acetone or MEK and do the same trick with the weather strip adhesive that you did to the heads.

Coat the rubber seals and the gasket area around the water passages with lots of Blue Silicone gasket sealer and put it together. Walla! No leaks and no gaskets that shifted out of place.

If you reuse the injectors from your old setup, a repair kit is available from most auto parts stores if needed. Coat the injector body "O" rings with oil before you use them and everything will slide back together.

For iron heads, clean the combustion chambers with a wire brush in an air or electric drill. I used a scraper for the pistons. I don't like to use the wire brush on pistons because it will remove metal very easily.

Change the oil once you get everything back together. Once the engine is up & running, run it for 1-2 hours and change the oil.

The ACT (Air Charge Temp) sensor will probably need to be moved. The GT 40 manifold isn't drilled & tapped for it to go into the intake like the stock manifold was. There is a boss cast into the GT 40, but a machine shop will have to drill & tap the new manifold. The best spot for the ACT is the air box if you don't do the drill and tap thing. You get to cut and splice the 2 ACT wires in order to make them long enough to reach the air box. Solder the wire extensions on the existing wires & use heat shrink tubing to cover the splices. Offset the place where you cut the wires so that you don't have a big bulge when you put heat shrink over the 2 wires to cover & protect them. The air box gets a hole (5/8" or so) for the ACT drilled about 1 1/4" down & 1/1/4" in on the front top side near the upper radiator hose. A brass fitting nut from Home Depot or Ace Hardware secures the ACT into the air box.
If you are very clever, you will find that the ACT connector comes apart so that you can remove the pins. A very small screwdriver releases the lock in the front of the center insert, while another small screwdriver inserted in the back pushes it out. Once the center insert is out of the connector shell, the pins come out easily. New pins are available from AutoZone in a $5 electrical pin kit for Fords. Crimping the pins on the extender wires saves you from having to splice them twice: once to put the connector on and once to extend the wires.

Tools: a good torque wrench is a must have item. A razor blade scraper that holds a single edge razor blade from Home Depot or Ace hardware is another handy thing. Get a Chilton or Haynes shop manual - you'll need it for the bolt torques and patterns. The intake manifold has an especially odd pattern. You'll need access to a timing light to set the timing after you re-stab the distributor.

Consumable parts:
Fuel injector seal kits with 2 O rings and a pintle cap (Borg-Warner P/N 274081) are available at Pep Boys auto parts. Cost is about $2.74 per kit. The pintle caps fit either injectors with a pin sticking out the injector end or 4 with more tiny holes in the injector end. The following are listed at the Borg-Warner site ( http://www.borg-warner.com ) as being resellers of Borg-Warner parts:

http://www.partsplus.com/ or http://www.autovalue.com/ or http://www.pepboys.com/ or http://www.federatedautoparts.com/

Most of the links above have store locators for find a store in your area.

Head gaskets
GT 40 upper manifold gasket
Fel Pro 1250 or equal lower manifold gasket set.
Rocker cover gaskets - look for the rubber ones with the steel bushings - Summit has them
Short formed hose between thermostat hosing and intake manifold
6 ft 7/64" or 1/8" vacuum hose
2 ft 1/2" heater hose
1 1/2 ft 5/8" heater hose
Blue Silicone sealer
ARP antiseize or equal for the bolts
ARP thread sealer or Teflon pipe dope for the short bolts.
4 each 3/4" hose clamps (spare item in case the old ones are bad)
4 each 1/2" hose clamps (spare item)
6 ft black 18 gauge wire
6 ft green 18 gauge wire
6 ft 1/4" heat shrink tubing
1 ft 3/16" heat shrink tubing

jrichker, that was amazing! i just sat here reading that and wanna go swap my heads out now, haha...good work!

The intake set....Fel-Pro MS93334...this is equal to the 1250 gasket and has the Blue silicone intake seal...plus dizzy o-ring....Discard the old stock upper gasket for MS 95953..its the Cobra U/L gasket...

I used the FMS M6003-A50...complete gasket set made by Fel-Pro...Its nice having EVERY gasket in the motor....I still have a ton of Fox gaskets left over,I runa SN95...The kit works for both...

The MS93334 KIT...

I assume the fuel injector kit would be universal for ford efi, but I really have no clue, so don't take my word on it. You want the injector kit for the vehicle the injectors came from. I read for V8's, you definately want new head bolts or you could upgrade to ARP Studs, which is what I did....about $95-100 or so. You also might consider some new header bolts...I chose the Stage 8 Locking Header bolts, they're around $40-45. I didn't see Header Gaskets on your list, so get some of those as well. I'm really not sure if you need a collector gasket or not, maybe someone can fill us both in on that. If you remove your throttle body from the upper intake, you'll need a throttle body gasket, but you can probably just leave it on...I pulled mine, so I needed a gasket for it. That's all I can think of dude...

New Head Bolts or Studs
Header bolts
Header Gaskets
Fuel Injector o-ring kit

Questionable things:
Collector Gaskets
Throttle body gasket

astronut1885 said:

I am installing an Explorer (GT40) intake when I put the heads in, so the TB has to be removed. I have aftermarket header bolts already too. I have done a few H pipe swaps and never needed a collector gasket. What I want to know is if I buy a complete top end gasket kit for a 97 Explorer 5.0, which is where my heads and intake are coming from, will that work for me? Thanks.

Click to expand...

That FMS # I gave above, covers all 302s from 1963-1997...so all things being equal, yes you should be ok with the 97 kit you mention...the heads/intake in the FMS kits are all Fel-Pro stuff...I used those head gaskets in the kit when i added my Thumpers...Alls cool...not a glitch with em....Best parts is the heads and intake gaskets all interlock with tabs...Fel-Pro stuff is sweet anyway...

When I did my engine, all I needed was all new top end gaskets, If your careful pulling out the injector rail, you won't ruin the o-rings, if you really want them, I think I have a full kit still sealed lying around somewhere you can have. The only hoses I replaced were the heater hoses that go into the firewall....and you should probably do the W/P to T-stat too like stated above.

Yes...I got my kit thru Ford.....I wanted to have em all...I ended up using every gasket in it....I have a about 20 gaskets and seals left...they go to a Fox and are unusable to me....
I have a Fox WP and a new stock timing set to...If you want a smokin deal and they could be of use, drop me a PM...I'm about 10 mins out of Portmouth N.H. They're just sitting around and i can't use em...The WP is different than SN95..

You should be all set with the Explorer H/I gaskets, those at the minimum should be the same...