Monday, February 13, 2012

Explorer Engine Swap - Installing The Engine

Since we have started on this course, we have done a lot of prep work for the new engine that is going into the Mustang.  In this post I will be discussing putting the engine back in.

There are a few things that I will be detailing in this article.  The most important of which is the priming of the oil pump.  I will also give some advice on how to get your engine and transmission lined up properly. 

The first thing I should mention is that I left out the removal of the motor mounts in my last post.  This was not intentional, but it will come in handy.

If you remember from the earlier post where we removed the old engine, you will notice that I left the headers in the car when I removed my engine.  I was able to get the engine out with the motor mounts still mounted to the engine, but when we try to put it back in, we will not want to have them in there.  The reason being that it is easier to move the engine around and put the starter on this way. 

Before we get started with the installation of the engine, you will want to make sure you have a couple of long bolts with the same thread as those that hold the engine to the transmission.  I would use a 6 inch bolt and cut the head off of it.  We will be using this to line up our transmission with the engine.  It is much easier to do this than to try to get the engine exactly as it should be and start the threads of the bolt.  Make sure when you put these bolts in they are only finger tight and you will be able to remove them after you have the engine lined up. 

Next make sure your flywheel bolt holes for the torque converter are in an upright T pattern.  Turn your torque converter the same way before dropping the engine in.  This will all help when lining things up.  Don't worry if your torque converter bolts are not 100% matched to the location of the holes.  The torque converter will spin a bit and you will be able to line them up.  The key is to get them close so you are not hunting for them.  It just saves a lot of time.

Drop your engine in the engine bay slowly.  When you are about 2/3 of the way down, you can start to bring the headers up and put them by the heads.  It may take a slight pry to get them over the head bolts, but it won't be difficult.

Keep dropping the engine in and push it back to line up the transmission bolts.  Once you have those holes matched up, you should be able to easily push the engine back and the doll pins will line up perfectly.  This will enable you to put the remainging bolts in the transmission and you can then take out those 2 long studs and put the regular bolts back in.  Trust me, this is a HUGE time saver.

Once the transmission is mounted and you have the torque converter bolted up as well, you will want to put the starter on the engine.  I left my starter in the engine bay because there was no reason to unhook the wires and it makes it much easier at this point to install it on the engine.  since the motor mounts are not in the way, you will be able to use some long extentions to put the bolts on and make sure they are tight.

At this point you can put the motor mounts on the engine and lower it the rest of the way in the engine bay. 

You are now ready to put the oil level sensor back in the oil pan.  Once this is completed, verify that your drain plugs are tight.

At this point you should put your oil in the engine.  Yeah, I know your valve covers are not on yet, but that is what you want.  You can pour the oil down the distributor hole.  This will allow for it to go in pretty quickly.

Once your oil is in, you will want to prime your oil pump.  Priming your oil pump will require a special tool.  This tool is available from Autozone and their loan a tool program.  This step is extremely important.  If you don't prime your oil pump and you start your engine, you will almost certainly damage all of the moving parts inside of the engine.  The reason being that all of the lubrication has been removed from your engine when we disassembled it.  You need to have your oil pump pump that oil to all the crevises where the oil should have been so you can protect your parts.  The tool you get from Autozone will allow you to do this.  You will also need to have a pretty heavy duty drill to turn the oil pump fast enough to get the oil to pump up enough to get everywhere.

The priming tool is basically a shaft that has a 1/4" hex driver on the bottom that will go over the oil pump shaft end.  There is also a round aluminum piece that will go where the distributor goes in order to keep the shaft straight.  The drill needs to turn counter clock wise.  Once you get this all hooked up and start the drill, it should only take a couple minutes and you will start to see oil coming up thru the pushrods and on the top of the heads.  Once you see this your pump has been primed and you are ready to finish putting your engine together.

I am not going to go into detail on everything that you need to do to put the engine in. Since you removed the old one and marked all of your wires and whatnot, you should be able to put it back together.  Make sure you torque the items to their specifications. 

The last piece you will want to assemble will be the upper intake.  This is going to require some customization that I will cover in my next post. 

No comments:

Post a Comment