Head Gasket Trouble - Pull Engine

Well turns out a little oil and scotch brite cured surface rust just fine

Well its not going as fast as I would like it to but progress is progress I guess. Aft finally getting all the surface rust taken care of I was able to get my first order of assembly done. Camshaft is installed.

I really wish I had a parts washer. Had to clean some things today and it just took longer than it should have. I really miss it.

Another set back was it rained all day today and even though I was in the garage I had to run through the rain anytime I needed something from the house, which turns out to be a lot, especially when beer 30 rolls around. :drink:

So here are few picks from today, I thought I would throw in a few of my work site while I was at it, I like seeing others work areas.











Poor thing is looking neglected...






While I was painting...







Quit raining for a minute all the way out here in bum fck eqypt...





Camshaft first, made it easier to install without crank in the way.

Man if that ain't the truth...

So I have a question about my valve seals. I went through a lengthy process to find new seals for stock e7te heads with summitracing only to find out they didn't have them. Vendor was out too.

The original seals still look great. 70,000 miles on them. Should I just reuse them?

I found some new ones I got from autozone that came in a felpro kit for my engine. Weird thing is they included 3 different types and only 8 seals per type not all 16. Weird.

2 of these are very similar to the OEM but have different lips on the umbrellas. I thought about using both these as they look like they both will work but i dunno.

Take a look at the pictures and let me know what you guys think?

The one on bottom of each pic is my original ford seal.

Woah, I just found them. Went to autozone.com and found the "Head Gasket Kit" I bought that included these valve seals. Then I went and searched for "Valve Stem Seals" and it came back with these.

These are the exact same seals I took a picture of above. The 3rd kind on the right is the seal I didn't take picture of because I thought they were a totally different kind of valve stem seal that didn't fit my application. Turns out they do fit somewhere(at least that is what AZ.com says...)

So now that I know they have 2 different seals(one for intake, one for exhaust) I can just use them for replacements I guess. But now I want to know what in the heck are those "Victor Reinz/Valve Stem Seals??? The notes say "Oil seal exhaust". What are they? Just another kind of valve stem seal or something else?

Status update:

1. cam installed
2. crank installed
3. bearing clearances checked
4. thrust end play checked

Washed and ran a rat tail brush through crank oil holes. Cleaned all bearings and surfaces thoroughly with brake cleaner and quickly dried them with compressed air.

Installed bearings, layed crank in dry, used plastiguage even though the shop said I was good.

Here is how all bearings did




.002 on all main bearings. This is good right? I'm thinking it is.


Pulled crank out, used permatex engine assembly lube on lower main bearing and upper main bearing. Only the crank caving sides of course. Layed the crank in, making sure she was all clean again, using my new ARP main bolts(154-5001) and tightened her down to 70 ft lbs.






Checked thrust bearing end play by using my new magnetic dial indicator that came with my cam degree kit. Came up with .0045 in of play. Then I used feeler guage to double check. On the back side of thrust bearing I could only fit a .004 guage in between the crank and thrust bearing. On the front side I could fit a .005 guage in between the two.

Is this ok?
.004 - .005 of crank shaft play? I'm thinking I'm ok....






I ended up finding an engine builder just one town over. Took my heads to him to see what he thought about my port job. He's gonna fix me up. Gonna shave off a little of the heads to draw up the deshrowding I did that was too close to gasket line. Then he sold me some better head gaskets with the crush wire in the ring. The shaving should give me a wash on CC volume while keeping me far enough away from being in danger of piston to valve clearance. I think he said .010 inch he would shave off. He is going to figure this out and when I get them back I will double check with some play-doe.

Then he is also doing a 3 angle valve job and re-surfacing the valves. The exhaust valves were worse than the intake valves. He will test spring tensile strength as well. All of this for about $200ish. I didn't want to spend any extra money on these heads but I broke down and said peace of mind is worth the dam money...

I had the drive train assembly balanced too. It took the crank, rods, pistons, piston rings, bearings, and flywheel to do this.

When I picked up my block and assembly from shop I noticed after I got home I had a little note on the flywheel box lol.

I guess he likes billet flywheels




And here is a pic of the holes made during balancing. Unfortunately I don't know which ones were already there before but I was told it was a normal balance not taking to much out.

Not sure if you guys are aware of this site but I really like it. Im all electronic these days and this helps. I use a cheap tablet in the garage for taking pics and looking up videos, data, and documentation on what I'm doing. This website called alldatadiy.com has all the service manuals for my vehicles. I spent like $16 for 1yr to just try it out and I'm going to go ahead and do a lifetime or whatever big package they have for all my vehicles cuz it's not just the Haynes manual it's a full service manual.

So I found my clearance info. The main bearings say max .0021 which kinda scares me a little. Mine came out with plastiguage at .002 like I mentioned above. What do you guy think, am I ok?

50oz, I bought wrong 28oz flywheel first and they made me get the 50. It was balanced with the new one.

Update: Got quite a bit done, but man it took me forever to do anything. Seemed to just be so crucial to keep this part of the rebuild super clean, no fm.

Installed timing chain



Had some trouble figuring out the eccentric. Hardly any pictures or documentation on this piece. So here you go, this is how it's installed at TDC. The small tab on back goes into the hole on the cam gear.










Gapped my new rings to .024 in because of the supercharger. I couldn't call ford and say hey, what should I gap my rings at with a vortech s/c pushing 7psi so I had to wing it with the rings manufacturer recommendations. Sealed Power moly rings. Called summit tech support line and they looked it up for me, .024 in top and bottom rings.




Pistons installed.








Had good luck with rod bearing clearance, all were the same.




I had an issue with piston number 3. Wouldn't slide in on its own. So I stuck it in the freezer for an hour. I had a feeling that it was just swollen from the rain and humidity outside that day but was worried that the piston would just swell back up... But after two days it's doing great. I can take two fingers on the breaker bar and turn the whole assembly.

I was in a hurry and got it installed before i shot a pic but if you look closely at the rod you can see the frost.




I used 5/16 tubing for rod bolt condoms.




Rod bolts to ARP instructed 30 ft lbs torque.






I degreed the stock cam. Based on the cam specs that are published in the service manual the INTAKE OPEN at .006 was supposed to be 20*, well it was only 16 so it's ground 4* retarded.

Even though I have a timing chain that can advance the cam however I decided to keep it straight up with the S/C. I'm told it's the way to go, especially with the stock cam.

But for those of you with the original H.O. cam we have a 4* retarded cam...




16* @ .006 lift






Last thing is my heads are still at the shop so I decided to test out my new oil pump and sump. Original factory shaft was wore out, glad I bought a new hardened ARP.




Got the pump installed ok, the new pickup not so much. Ended up being too low in the pan, I couldn't even get the pan seated on the block. So I tried the original pickup thinking it was the aftermarket issue. It was better but still touched the pan.

So it appears that the aftermarket pump and pickup tube were not perfect. I ended up heating the tube up and bending it 1/2 inch. I will have pics next post.

The shaft fit good, the pump cleared the crank, just working on the pickup.

RangerJoe said:

Looking good. Fyi, if you are staying file injected and running an electric pump, the fuel eccentric on the cam gear is not needed. That is for running a mechanical pump.

Joe

Click to expand...

Interesting, why would it be included from the factory then? This is the first time this engine has ever been cracked open...

1989 GT

Dang, I already buttoned up my timing cover. Guess it will have to stay on till the next tear down... Which hopefully will be long enough that I will forget this knowledge, put it back on again, and ask you guys again about it after I have already buttoned up my timing cover again...