Disassembling The Engine Part 3

Yeah, as the replacement engine turned out to be in even worse condition than my original, I decided to bite the bullet and restore the original motor now. That meant tearing it down. I had the Mustang moved to the rented garage and got to work.

A few hours later I had removed the intake manifold and pulled the heads. Things looked pretty good inside the engine.

I could feel a slight ridge in the cylinder walls with tip of my fingers but they did not catch my nail when running it across them. I'm really hoping it can be removed without overboring the cylinders as that would mean getting new pistons. Well, I'll take the block to a machinist and ask what can be done.

New Engine? More Like New Turd

After getting the engine to a stand, it was easy to start the investigation. I cleaned it a bit and removed the oil pan. I was greeted with this sight.

The pan and oil pump pickup were covered in brown sludge and pieces of hard plastic. I tried finding the source of the plastic and the best explanation was perhaps the valve seals. I checked them and the rubber seals were there but I'm not sure if they should contain plastic too.

It was not looking good but perhaps at least the bearings would be better. They weren't. I only opened two main caps and had seen enough. Here's bearing number two.

It's also possible to see the camshaft in the background. Many of its lobes are unhealthy orange in color. Just to be sure, I also checked the bearing number 4.

Yeaaah, the bearings are worse than in my own original engine. Final nail to the coffin were the spark plugs. Two of them seemed pretty oily so either the valve seals or piston rings had been leaking.

There's no sense in putting this engine to my car so I guess I'll sell its good pieces to someone and use the money to fix my original engine. It will probably take most of the winter so I'm not sure if I can drive the car next summer after all...

New Engine

While investigating my engine I came to the conclusion that just throwing new bearings in it would probably not help much. The piston rings, valves, valve springs, camshaft and everything else is most likely also 47 years old and in need of some TLC. A complete rebuild would take the whole winter and not to mention all my money. So, I needed another option.

A possible solution appeared to FMOC forum in the form of a 302 engine sales ad. It was a 69 block with 289 heads and all accessories. The ad said that it was in good condition and the price was right so I reserved it. A couple of day later I drove over to check it out.

The seller had not driven with the engine himself but said that it had been in a car when he bought it. Previous owner had been using it a lot and it seemed fine then. I took a risk and bought it hoping I could clean it up and put it in my car temporarily. This way I would have time to fix the rest of the car and drive next summer. I'll rebuild the original engine later and put it back.

While at it, I realized that doing this engine work in my cold and damp garage was guaranteed to cause problems. FMOC forum came to the rescue again as I found a warm garage for rent a couple of kilometers from my home. I checked it out and took it for the winter. Hopefully I won't have to move there completely to get the car back to running condition in the following months...

First I will investigate my new engine a bit so I can trust it to run next summer. I think I'll open the oil pan and check the bottom end for wear. If everything seems good, I'll just clean and paint it and lift it in my Mustang. Let's hope I won't find any surprises...