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...

Disassembling The Engine Part 2

Finally it was time to drop the crankshaft. Everything around it had been removed so I could get it out of the engine. First I had to remove all the connecting rod caps. They are attached with just two nuts so I removed them and pulled the caps. I stored them in order so I can put them back in the same positions.

Next I loosened the main caps and made sure the crank came down with them. Finally, very carefully, I removed caps and took the crank down.

It was time to check the damage. The crank journals seemed pretty good and only two had some small scratched that I could feel with my finger. Hopefully I can just have it polished and put it back.

The bearings had taken most of the damage. Here's a photo of the mains.

All of then have worn down to the copper. No wonder the oil pressure dropped a bit when idling. The rod bearings were not much better.

So now everything necessary has hopefully been taken off the engine so I can service the parts and start putting everything back together. We'll see how that goes. I'm especially nervous how I can get the crank back in and attach all the connecting rods...

Disassembling The Engine Part 1

With the course laid in, it was time to tear down the engine. First I drained the coolant and removed the radiator. This gave me enough room to get the fan out. Then I disconnected the alternator wires, unbolted it and lifted it out. Now I could get to the water pump and remove it.

The harmonic balancer was a bit more tricky to get out. I removed the three bolts that hold the pulley to the damper and then had to get the large crank bolt out. It is so tight that you need to prevent the engine from turning. I did that by adding two of the flywheel bolts to the back of the crank, placed my jack handle between them and turned the engine until the handle touched the exhaust. Now the crank would not turn and I could get the bolt out.

Finally I needed a puller to get the damper out. My friend had one so I borrowed it. He had made it by welding two pieces of iron together and drilling four holes to it. Simple but effective and I soon had the balancer out.

DIY harmonic balancer puller

Now the road was clear for the timing chain cover. I unbolted the fuel pump from it and then removed the cover itself.

The timing chain itself can be pulled out by just removing the fuel pump eccentric and then wiggling the gears until they come free. The chain had quite a lot of play so it's definitely time to replace it.

Before continuing to drop the crank, I removed the oil pump and then cleaned the parts a bit to see what new stuff I needed. Luckily most were in pretty good condition. The chain cover was almost like new. No rust, just a lot of dirt. I'll clean it, paint it and put it back.

The water pump was also really good. So good that I suspect that it has been replaced at some point. No rust inside or out and no play in the shaft. No need to replace it either.

Finally I checked the damper and again found nothing wrong with it. The rubber seemed good so it can be reused after some more cleaning.

So only the oil pump, timing chain and bearings need to be replaced. Unless I find more surprises...

Old and new oil pumps

New Federal Mogul timing chain

Plans For The Engine

I've been going through some options for my engine. Option one would be a full rebuild. That would mean pulling the engine out, completely tearing it apart, machining the block and heads, probably buying a lot of new parts and putting the engine back together. Of course this gives the best results but to do that in Finland, you could buy a completely new engine with the same money.

Option two is to just replace the worn parts with the engine in the car and driving to the sunset without breaking the bank. Well, driving in about six months when the snows melt again...

As I'm not a major owner of Supercell (a small game company that was partially sold to the Japanese for 1,1 billion euros (1.5 billion dollars) last week), I think I will have to go with option two. I will buy new main bearings, rod bearings, oil pump and timing chain. And perhaps a new water pump. By replacing those, I should be able to use the engine just fine without a complete rebuild as it was not burning oil and ran well.

First I needed to know the bearing size. My old bearings had these markings:
C50E-6A338-A-B
CLEV
FoMoCo
T-77(r)
65

What I could find, it is the original size Ford small block bearing made in 1965. The original bearing that my engine left the factory with. Pretty amazing that it's not worn more that what it is...

Project Blows Up

I've been preparing the car for the new transmission for the past days. I cleaned the underbody by scraping and brushing as much dirt out as possible. It seemed that some rust proofing had been added there at some point and it had worked really well. All floors seemed to be original and in really good condition from underneath. I just hope that the floors would have been rustproofed better from the inside too.

I sprayed some new rustproofing to the floors and turned my attention to the engine. Clearly some oil had been leaking from the rear seal or through the flywheel bolt holes.

I decided to drop the oil pan and replace the rear main seal and also investigate the bearings now that it was easy. I had to remove the crossmember under the engine and loosen the sway bar to get the pan out. It was a tight fit but I didn't have to remove the steering linkage. Everything looked pretty original inside the engine too.

Pretty much everything was covered in brown old oil. I have a feeling the engine has never been rebuilt. It was time to remove the end cap and replace the seal under it. It seemed to be the really old rope seal so I would have to loosen all the main bearing caps to drop the crank a bit to get the top half out. Unfortunately I did not get that far when I checked the bearing.

Yeah, it does not look too good. So now I will need to replace the main bearings. And while at it, rebuild the whole engine most likely. This project has officially now blown up...