Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - Cleaning The Gasket Areas

Up to this point everything has been pretty fun to do.  Now we are at the point where we will need to do some of the tedious work.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Pictures, Comments, And Followers

I am sure a common question you may be asking is why are there no pictures with any of the posts?  This is actually pretty simple.  When I was working through the engine swap, I wasn't intending on creating a blog about it.  In essence, I didn't take a lot of pictures thru the process.  I know pictures would be very helpful.

Although I do have some, they don't necessarily depict the steps that you will be walking thru at this point. 

Currently I am working on other items that will be blog posts later and I will be taking pictures of those and posting.  Eventually I will get into the rebuilding of the engine I removed from my mustang and at that point I will be able to go thru and make the pictures to go along with the steps discussed up to this point. 

Until that point, if you have a question about any step in this process, feel free to leave a comment on the post and I will do my best to answer it.  I will try to answer as soon as I possibly can with as much detail as possible.  If I have an image that would be useful to you I can either email it to you or update the post with it. 

Ask anything about the post, It will help make the blog better.

Until last week I didn't realize comments were only allowed for people who joined my blog or who were followers of it.  Although I recommend that anyone who finds this information to follow my blog, I turned off the requirement.  Now you can annonymously post a comment.  The only thing I ask is that you be respectful  I still moderate comments to prevent the spammers from getting all the crap on here.

Please become a follower of my blog.  I am not a business, I will not use this information to spam you, I would just like to get a solid base of people reading so that I know what I am posting is being read and not for nothing.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - Installing the Timing Chain and Oil Pump

Following all of the articles so far, we now have the valve springs and cam shaft installed.  The next piece of this is to get the timing chain and oil pump installed on this motor.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - Getting The Shaft - Putting The Cam In

Up to this point we have discussed preparing your engine for all of this work.  We have also discussed how to change the valve springs, now it is time to move on to the camshaft.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - Springing Into Action - Installing Your Valve Springs

In this post I am going to be covering what it is going to take to change your valve springs while the heads are still attached to the engine.

Yup, that's right without taking the heads off.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - Removing The Essentials

In the last article, we talked about stripping the Explorer engine down to the core components that you will need to use.

From this point going forward, you will want to save everything you remove from this engine because you will most likely be reusing it again.

Let's get started.


Saturday, January 21, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - Getting Started - Disassembling the Explorer Engine

So far we have researched what you need to do this conversion, how much it should cost for the parts, and what tools you need.  Now it is time to get your hands dirty.

In the next series of articles I am going to break down the stripping of the Explorer engine.

I am going to break each of these articles down into approximately 2 hours worth of work each. 

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Prepare Your Workspace

Before you start any project, you need to prepare your workspace for the task at hand. 

This article goes thru some tips and tricks to help make your life easier when  you work on your engine. 

For starters, make sure your work area is big enough to handle what you are trying to do. 

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - What Tools Will I need?

A quick recap...  So in the recent articles we have talked about choosing the engine, what parts you will need to get this engine going, and how to save money when purchasing these parts.  These are all very valuable pieces of information, but today I am going over something that will be a definite savings in time. 

Today we are discussing what types of tools you will need to do the Explorer engine conversion, some of the common sizes, and some suggestions for improved experience.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Extreme Couponing For The Gear Head

In my last post I discussed all of the parts that you need and where to get them from.  I specifically pointed certain locations for those parts because it relates to this article.

Here I will tell you how to save over $100 on this particular conversion.  I will also show you how you can save on other parts purchases as well.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - The Shopping List

In my previous posts I covered the parts that were required as well as some of the other parts that were a good idea to replace.  In this post I am going to go over a full shopping list of all the parts in one place as well as give you a good idea of how much they will cost.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - Better to Be Safe Than Sorry

In my last article I explained what some of the required pieces are that it would take to do the Engine conversion into the Mustang.  Now I am going to go into some of the things you should replace since you are doing this.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - Exploring Into the Mustang

Prior to choosing the Explorer engine to go into the Mustang, I told you I did a bunch of research into what it was going to take to put the engine in and what parts it would need to put it in there.  This is a quick compilation to that.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Choosing the Right Engine

Quick recap...  At this point you know that I bought a Mustang that I shouldn't have, and it has a bad engine in it.  Now I need to decide what engine to get and what are the pluses and minuses of them?

I have a decision to make.  Do I put the stock engine back in the care, or do I take this opportunity to upgrade what is there?  The problem is, I am on a tight budget because we weren't planning on replacing an engine so soon.  This brought us to buying a used engine instead of purchasing one that has already been rebuilt or rebuilding it myself.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

The Ultimate Decision

A quick recap...  We found a mustang and chose to buy it against better judgement sinde we arlready had one, and the new one has all sorts of problems...

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

The Problems Started on the Way Home

In my previous post, I mentioned how I ended up with a second mustang.  Now I get to tell you why I should have never bought it and some of the tell tale signs I now see in hindsight.