Out of the ashes, a Phoenix is born

[ford20]

I just want to say that this will probably be a slow teardown and build as I work on the weekends as well and have maybe an hour a day to devote to tearing this down, plus I have to wait to gather funds for the build since this happened at an inopportune time (not that there is ever a great time for your engine to decide to devour its self). This is my car Toothless, it is a 2012 Boss 302 Laguna Seca. People keep asking me why the hell would you call it Toothless, it sounds so stupid! Well, I am a dork and Toothless is the dragon from How to Train Your Dragon. He is a Nightfury which is the fastest most agile dragon there is which is somewhat like the Laguna Seca in the Mustang lineup. Plus they are both black and red and I have been told a couple of times that I look like a much bigger version of Hiccup.

Well, it seemed as if I had started to develop a tick with my engine. I parked it for a bit to try and figure out what was wrong with it and over the course of a couple of weeks I forgot about it. I couldn’t find the keys to my V6 and started the Boss up and I was quickly reminded of the loud noise emanating from my engine. Anyway, it sounded something like this in case anyone is interested in what prompted this whole process.

http://vid579.photobucket.com/albums/ss233/fordfan7689/20140914_143224_zpsbc3afb89.mp4

Well after that, I parked the car until that weekend and drained the oil. When I did I didn’t notice any metal flakes through the oil so I thought that I was in the clear there. Well, I was wrong. When I was draining the oil from the drain pan I noticed a couple of sparkles coming from the oil and that’s when I noticed everything.







The next step was to take the engine out of the car. It was pretty straight forward, the only real hiccups that I ran into was that I rounded off one of the bolts from the exhaust manifold to the cat so I removed the clamp that connects the cat to the midpipe. The starter motor has a bolt on the very top of it that is a pain to get to from under the car or from the side of it, so what I did was put a couple of extensions together and attacked it from the front of the engine where the A/C condenser was. The biggest problem was actually getting the engine free from the transmission. When it came time to pull the engine it just wouldn’t budge, eventually after a lot of up and down with a jack and the engine hoist I got enough daylight to finally get the very tip of a screwdriver in between the bellhousing and the metal plate and use it somewhat as a wedge to finally break it free. I decided to remove the hood to make it a lot easier to actually pull the engine from the car.

I had the engine in this position for a while until I was finally able to get the away from the transmission.


After about 2 hours of up and down and back and forth and getting the screwdrivers around the bellhousing out it came.





The obligatory (not so) empty engine bay shot

 

[ford20]

Now that the engine was out of the car it was time to bolt it up to the stand. I removed the flywheel, clutch assembly, and pulse ring so that I can bolt it to the engine stand. Upon doing so, I noticed that it looks like I didn’t have the revised o-ring around the crankshaft position sensor like I was told since it appears I have the stock orange o-ring. At least this confirmed my suspicions about possibly having a bad crankshaft position sensor after I performed a quick test.



As a quick aside, I know that for the Boss 302 this should tell you if the CKP is bad or not. I’m not sure if it is the same for the GT’s but I would imagine that it would still hold true. I am 95% sure that this is the way you do this but I will look around a bit more and see if I can’t find the thread and update the post in case I am wrong. Drive the car for about 15 or 20 minutes in 4th gear with the RPM’s between 4,000-4,250 and the check engine should come on and flashing. If this happens, than everytime the solution has been to replace the CKP. This is normally a problem for the 2012’s as they revised and udated the wiring harness for the 2013’s. It seems that the wiring prongs act as tuning forks almost and vibrate themselves to death on a road course in a matter of 15 hours or so.

• Pressure Plate/Clutch Assembly – 9 x 13mm
• Flywheel – 8 x 19mm

Once I got everything removed I was able to bolt the engine onto the stand and remove the hoist from the garage. From there I pulled the motor mounts off followed by the valve covers to see if there was any carnage in the valvetrain. I couldn’t really find anything outside of some metal shavings on the shaft of the uhhhh camshaft as well as some odd wearing on two of the LH intake cam lobes. Outside of that everything else looks ok by my eyes (ie. No giant chunks of shiznit missing or gouged).




From there I turned my focus onto the oil pan. I removed the oil pan and separated it from the windage tray (I just grabbed my plastic fastner removal tool and used that to separate the oil pan and windage tray this way I could remove the pan, then unbolt the pickup tube and take off the windage tray). Upon doing so it looked like someone poured silver metallic paint into the oil pan and mixed in a tiny bit of oil in there. After looking at it a bit further, the oil has a bit of a milk shake look to it but maybe I am wrong here so maybe someone more knowledgeable than I can say the oil looks a bit odd like a head gasket leak. So far it has only looked like this when I took off the oil pan so maybe that had something to do with it, but either way I think I can repaint my Vapor Silver V6 with what is in the bottom of the oil pan haha.

• Valve Covers - 14 each side (28 total) x 10mm
• Oil Pan/Windage Tray –16 x 10mm & 3 x 13mm
• Oil pickup tube bolts – 3 x 10mm
• Oil Pickup tube spacer – 1 x 17mm

From there it was just a matter of taking everything apart to see if I can figure out where all of this metal was coming from. I started by removing as much as I could off of the block before opening up the front cover.

• A/C compressor – 3 x 13mm
• Alternator – 2 x 15mm & 1 nut x 13mm
• Camshaft Position Sensors – 4 x 8mm black=intake; grey=exhaust
• Cowl Ground Strap -1 x 10mm
• Crankshaft Position Sensor – 1 x 8mm
• Crankshaft Pulley Bolt – 1 x 17mm
• Exhaust Manifold nuts – 16 x 15mm
• Exhaust Studs – 16 x 6mm
• Knock Sensors – 2 x 10mm (1 per sensor)
• Idler Pulley – 1 x 13mm
• Tensioner Pulley – 1 x 13mm
• Thermostat Housing -2 x 8mm
• Water Pump Bolts – 4 x 10mm
• Water Pump Pulley Bolts – 4 x 10mm

Just a little note for the Newbies that haven’t done anything like this before (such as me), if you haven’t taken off a water pump before you can grab a hammer and lightly tap the snout to help loosen it up and you should be able to wrestle it out once you can get it to wiggle a little bit. I folded up a rag a couple of times as not to damage the water pump and gave it a little tappy tap tap like in Happy Gilmore.

I have to give a big thank you to Tad over at Freedom Racing! I went out and bought a 3 jaw puller to remove the crankshaft pulley. Well, I put it together and the bolts weren’t really long enough for the nuts to get a good grab on them so the second I put some pressure on it to remove the pulley, the ****ing thing exploded and I mean exploded. I think I still have an imprint mark on my forehead from one of the projectiles (nuts and bolts and stuff) hitting my head. I think a squirrel that was watching me work got knocked off the rafter of the garage, cursed at me for being cheap and scurried away. Anyway, I sent him a PM Sunday afternoon about getting me a new 3 jaw puller. I got a PM from him shortly after that saying that he would head down to the office and check for me how soon I could get one. Sunday night he PM’d me back and I ordered it and I had it on my doorstep Tuesday Morning. If you need any Ford Specific Tools I would HIGHLY recommend giving him a shout. This isn’t my first dealing with Tad and every time I have spoken with him or bought something from him you would get excellent service. Automotive Specialty Tools

Anyway, if you have never used a 3 jaw puller on a crankshaft pulley before it is pretty straight forward. There are 3 jaws that connect to either the 3 inside prongs of the pulley or along the outside of the pulley. I grabbed a 1” reducer and put it into the threaded insert for the crank pulley bolt and started cranking. Once it got to a certain point the crank pulley popped right off. It’s nice when you have the right tools to do the job for once haha. Anyway, it looked a little something like this.

 

[ford20]

At this point it was time to start breaking into the engine and seeing what is going on in there. So I started removing the front cover. I took the RTV off by hand and grabbed the front cover at the top and pulled it off. Off comes the front cover and I started working on removing the timing chains.



I started with the LH side. First you rotate the crank until the keyway is at the 12 o’clock position and all 4 data matrix’s on the cams are facing up. From there you can remove the tensioner. Remember that the tensioner is still under pressure so unless you are holding it up or propping it up somehow it will probably fly off somewhere. When I removed the tensioner I found little bits of metal on the plunger (I guess that is what you would call it) as well as the timing chain guides.


Keyway at the 12 O’clock position

Data Matrix on the top of the camshafts. All 4 have to be facing up. If they all aren’t facing up turn the crankshaft until the keyway is at the 12 o’clock position and all 4 are facing up.
From there you can remove the tensioner arms. You might have to rotate the crankshaft to release a little bit more tension in the chain so you can remove the timing chain guides. After that remove the 6 screws holding the phasers on and you can slide the phasers forward 2 inches. Make sure you depress the secondary tensioner and rotate it 90 degrees this way you can remove the phasers.



After that you can remove the secondary chain. That being said, I completely forgot to look for the timing mark on the LH side so I have no idea where it was which is bugging me. Anyway, when I looked at the timing chain on the RH side I noticed that it looks like the marks don’t line up. From best I can tell the dark link is supposed to be lined up with the indentation on the phaser. Can someone confirm if this is true or not?



The procedure is basically the same for removing the RH timing chains except this time you turn the keyway to the 9 o’clock position. After the primary and secondary timing chains are removed, I slid off the crank sprocket followed by the oil pump. Then I went back up top and started removing the cams. The workshop manual is very clear about this since they say it a couple of times and have it written in bold. You have to remove the front camshaft bearing mega cap first or else you could damage the engine. Considering how good I am at damaging the engine just by starting and driving it I figured if I didn’t do this first I would end up cracking it in half somehow so what the hell. After that I slowly started loosening the bolts for the rest of the cam caps following the torqueing sequence this way I could remove whatever spring pressure was on the cams evenly. After removing the front mega cap I found some pretty bad scoring on the cam journals and once again I found some pretty big metal flakes on the camshafts. After removing all the cam caps I was able to pull the cams out and found scoring on almost all 32 journals. They are deep enough where you can feel them through the glove and your fingernail catches on them. I’m not certain how bad that is but that will be addressed later after talking to some people about the build plans. Anyway, onto more pictures.

Some pictures of the metal pieces on the cams:









That being said when I cleaned off the cams and I saw this on all 4 cams. I am assuming that these marks are normal since they all have it but I just want to make sure that is the case. I also left the filters for the cams in there.





After that I removed the crankshaft position sensor and the cylinder head temperature sensor. I cleaned up the heads a little bit and took the picture-o-shinyness



Well you are all caught up at this point. This weekend I would like to finally remove the oil cooler and open up the oil pump and see if anything is cracked in there or not. I just have to find a 13-16mm Allen Key so I can try and take off the oil cooler and I will be in business again and hopefully tear the engine down a lot more.

• Cam Cap Bolts – 20 each side (40 total) x 10mm
• Cylinder Head Temperature Sensor – 1 x ¾”
• Front Cover – 8 x 10mm / 7 x 13mm
• Oil Pump – 2 x 8mm / 1 x 9mm / 1 x 13mm
• Phasers – 3 per phaser (12 total) x 10mm
• Timing chain Guides – 1 each side (2 total) x 10mm
• Timing Chain Tensioners – 2 each side(4 total) x 10mm

 

[VoodooBoss]

Sean, sorry to see you've had to tear into your engine but I look forward to following along. I haven't torn into a motor like you're doing in a very long time and never one as sophisticated as the Boss motor. I'm sure I'll learn a lot from your build.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

Great info, will be doing this myself in a couple weeks. Just got the engine hoist today...

 

[Grant 302]

Oof.

I was worried about wiped/galled bearings in your 'teaser' oil pan pic from a while back. Good luck with the rebuild...looking forward to your progress updates.

 

[302 Hi Pro]

Sean:

Once you pull the crankshaft you might find the cause of this failure at least I hope you do. Back in 2011/12 I remember reading about a rear cylinder head coolant cross flow kit/tube. Have you seen this and if so will you consider installing it?

Keep the updates coming.

Dave
2HP

 

[steveespo]

Sean
Sorry for your trouble, I don't know if you've mentioned by what did Ford say? You are still under warranty.
Steve

 

[ford20]

Sean, sorry to see you've had to tear into your engine but I look forward to following along. I haven't torn into a motor like you're doing in a very long time and never one as sophisticated as the Boss motor. I'm sure I'll learn a lot from your build.

It's the first time I have ever done anything like this for me so it certainly is one hell of crash course haha. If you or anyone else wants me to elaborate a bit more on some things just let me know

Great info, will be doing this myself in a couple weeks. Just got the engine hoist today...

If you will, might I recommend getting some sort of drip pan for the engine stand. Thank god I have one or else I would be cleaning up probably a gallon and change of coolant and a quart or two of oil off the floor in the garage haha.

Oof.

I was worried about wiped/galled bearings in your 'teaser' oil pan pic from a while back. Good luck with the rebuild...looking forward to your progress updates.

I'm still pretty sure that the bearings being chewed to bits so hopefully I will be able to find out today if that is the case. Thanks, I'm going to need all the luck I can get haha.

Sean:

Once you pull the crankshaft you might find the cause of this failure at least I hope you do. Back in 2011/12 I remember reading about a rear cylinder head coolant cross flow kit/tube. Have you seen this and if so will you consider installing it?

Keep the updates coming.

Dave
2HP

Hi Dave,

I'm hoping that is the case as well. Knowing my luck though, I will pull the crankshaft and everything will look perfectly fine haha. Yes, you are talking about the MMR cooling mod. IMO, I wouldn't put one on my car because MMR has never been able to provide any data on it and I would just worry about reducing the efficiency of the cooling system somehow.

Sean

Sean
Sorry for your trouble, I don't know if you've mentioned by what did Ford say? You are still under warranty.
Steve

Well, it wasn't so much Ford as it was the dealer when I picked the car up that told me. So maybe they were just trying to get me to buy their extended warranty plan or whatever. Considering there was tune on the car though it would have been a hard to trying to get anything warrantied I would have imagined so me being bored combined with the fact that I wanted to build the motor anyway prompted me to just do this myself.

 

[stunya]

Sorry for the hassle, but best of luck with the build. Subscribed to see your efforts!

 

[steveespo]

Didn't know about the tune. Yeah they would deny it most likely.
Good luck with the build. Consider an Aluminator short block as a foundation.
Steve

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

Drip pan sounds like a good idea.

On that MMR coolant bridge, I scrapped that from my build plan after talking to some racers that were using it. No quantifiable benefit, and some people think it might have actually hurt the engines.

No definite data either way but I'll save that $230 for other things.

 

[ford20]

Today was a productive day all things considering. First I started off with removing the heads. It was a fairly simple process, nothing really all that major to report there. Upon first inspection I didn’t see any signs of a head gasket leak, nor did I see anything that would indicate detonation. Just a whole lot of carbon buildup for 18,000 miles, well at least in my opinion.

Here is the LH side Heads along with a close up of the piston heads.






Here is the RH side heads along with a close up of each pistons.







After I pulled the heads off it was time to go ahead and take out the pistons. I turned the engine upside down and started getting to work on the pistons. Upon removing the 1st piston the bearings sort of stayed on the crankshaft. By the end of it 5 out of 8 pistons had the bearings stay on the crankshaft while the others came out with the pistons caps. Now, I am not 100% certain if that is indicative of spun bearing but I figured I would at least mention it in case that would be a sign of a spun bearing. All of the piston caps had some scoring marks on them with what looks like a hot spot while some of the piston bearings had some marks on them. Anyway, onto the pictures. There are a lot of them so my apologies in advanced.

#1






#2







#3







#4






The bearings on number 4 looked like it had the little tabs worn down a little bit and the stamped part numbers on the bearings seemed to be a little bit worn down.

#5







#6






You can sort of see it in the picture but it looks like some of the metal found in the engine came from #6 due to the fresh scoring on the lower part of it

#7








The bearings on #7 were completely destroyed! It was out of round, the edges were ground down to an point basically. The little tabs were worn down to almost nothing and the stamped markings on the back were completely worn away. It is sort of hard to see in the last picture but you can almost see where those tabs are on the bearing and they are almost completely gone.

#8







Outside of that I looked at the cylinder bores and they looked like they were in fairly good condition. Just some light marks on 2 of the bores along with one bore that had vertical marks along with some sort of cross hashing marks.







After that I went to go and take out the Main caps out and the first one came out super easy. The 2nd and 3rd ones I pulled out with my hands. If someone has an easier way of taking them out please let me know. It takes only 3 minutes to pull them out but still there has to be some better way. In my infinite wisdom I bolted up the block to the engine stand without removing the rear main seal and crankshaft rear seal plate thingie. I believe I have to remove the rear main seal in order to take that off but if someone knows otherwise I am all ears. I couldn’t finish taking off the last main cap because the 2 15mm bolts in the center are being impeded by the plate so I put the other 4 back on so that I didn’t lose anything.

• Boss 302 Head Bolts – 10 (20 each side) x 15mm
• Boss 302 Oil Cooler – 3 x 10mm / 1 fitting 14mm or 9/16
• Piston Rod Bolts – 16 x 12mm
• Main Caps – 20 x 13mm / 10 x 15mm

 

[VoodooBoss]

Sean thanks again for taking the time to do this. Most of the Boss engines that have popped get shipped off to Ford never to be heard from again.

 

[576]

Very nice documentation. I wonder if you could give a little of the history of the engine/ ownership. You stated 18K miles. My first impression when looking at the pics of the pistons is the issue of oil consumption which is common throughout various brands now that reducing parasitic drag and going to longer service intervals have become popular (Combination of lower ownership cost and better fuel mileage). This seems to be typically caused by the oiling in the ring lands becoming plugged and preventing any movement and thus the rings can no longer seal properly. I have had to deal with this issue as a mechanic at the dealer level. I am interested if you had any oil consumption, oil quality, low oil or other issues at any point. What I see in the pics of the bearings is what I have seen due to loss of oil/ extended low oil level/ absence of regular oil replacement. NOT trying to place any blame… Just curious because I have an early '12 Boss that used a lot of oil up to about 10k miles. I get what I think is a lot of noise when cold, but goes away hot. I envision rebuilding my engine at some point. Also, what source are you using for d/a procedure and future setup? Thanks for any information.

 

[steveespo]

Agreed, all signs point to oil starvation and oil consumption. How much oil came out of the sump before tear down? I know Steve Puffpaff's engine sucked in its oil when it went on him and wiped it out. All that burned oil on the piston tops indicates oil being sucked into the intake. Chances that all cylinders had bad rings is slim so oil most likely came in from the top. You can probably rebuild what you have but there is a lot of machine work that needs to be done, and you need new cams, pistons, cam phasers, rings, heads need the cam bores line bored and honed, everything checked for clearance and reassembled. In the end I would personally go with an Aluminator and a new set of Boss heads. Spending the money to rebuild, trying to assemble it yourself or having a shop that may or may not have the experience with these engines and hoping the original parts are put back to tolerance is a big gamble in my opinion.
Hopefully it works out for you. You do need a micrometer and a bore micrometer and start measuring things. If the journals on the crank are way out of round, or the cams and cam bores are worn past spec you'll have an idea how much damage there really is.
Steve

 

[2012Boss302]

my bet is the oil pump cracked and took out the bearings. How often do you track the car ???

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

If you're rebuilding, either way, you should go with the billet oil pump gears.

The Aluminator SHORT BLOCKS have them stock (full crate engines do not, with the exception of the Aluminator XS).

If you're rebuilding the existing block you can go with the TSS billet gears. They are the ones that FRPP uses for their builds. MMR also makes a set but I've heard some rumors that the tolerances are not as good as the TSS.

And with a nearly complete 180* on that opinion, MMR also makes a billet timing chain sprocket that you might as well do while you're in there. "Cheap" insurance for high-RPM operation.

 

[ford20]

Sean thanks again for taking the time to do this. Most of the Boss engines that have popped get shipped off to Ford never to be heard from again.

Well I would like to thank everyone here. This certainly is the best forum I am on when it comes to knowledge and experience with the Boss 302 and road racing in general. Hopefully people can learn more about it and learn from it and also help me in the process .

Very nice documentation. I wonder if you could give a little of the history of the engine/ ownership. You stated 18K miles. My first impression when looking at the pics of the pistons is the issue of oil consumption which is common throughout various brands now that reducing parasitic drag and going to longer service intervals have become popular (Combination of lower ownership cost and better fuel mileage). This seems to be typically caused by the oiling in the ring lands becoming plugged and preventing any movement and thus the rings can no longer seal properly. I have had to deal with this issue as a mechanic at the dealer level. I am interested if you had any oil consumption, oil quality, low oil or other issues at any point. What I see in the pics of the bearings is what I have seen due to loss of oil/ extended low oil level/ absence of regular oil replacement. NOT trying to place any blame… Just curious because I have an early '12 Boss that used a lot of oil up to about 10k miles. I get what I think is a lot of noise when cold, but goes away hot. I envision rebuilding my engine at some point. Also, what source are you using for d/a procedure and future setup? Thanks for any information.

As far as the history of the car is concerned I can't tell you anything before the 5,000 mile mark which is when I bought it from Ford. It was a pre-production car (MP car for whatever that is worth) that I was told has an interesting history. But, that is about all the information that I was able to tell about it. After that I got the car. Oil change was done at ~7,000 miles and about 16,000 IIRC. I did have a check engine light come on at one point around the 10,000 mile mark and I was down 2 quarts. I put 2 quarts in and the light went off so I am assuming that that was the oil level light? Shortly after that I put on the Oil catch can which deleted the PCV system instead of using a JLT style catch can to only catch some of the blow by. I very well could have run low on oil since previous to this I was a little bit lax on maintenance procedures (ie. not checking the oil regularly) but I did just recently put in 2 quarts of oil again (late August some time). When i drained the oil I came up with just under 3 quarts plus a tick over 3/4 gallon jug and whatever else was left in the engine when I started taring it apart. If it was my fault and I ran it out of oil than that is good news IMO because I know that there wasn't some sort of mechanical failure where I have to pin point the cause.

As far as what I am using to disassemble the engine, I have been using http://iihs.net/fsm/ and alldatadiy.com and will be doing so for the reassembly along with some other things.

Agreed, all signs point to oil starvation and oil consumption. How much oil came out of the sump before tear down? I know Steve Puffpaff's engine sucked in its oil when it went on him and wiped it out. All that burned oil on the piston tops indicates oil being sucked into the intake. Chances that all cylinders had bad rings is slim so oil most likely came in from the top. You can probably rebuild what you have but there is a lot of machine work that needs to be done, and you need new cams, pistons, cam phasers, rings, heads need the cam bores line bored and honed, everything checked for clearance and reassembled. In the end I would personally go with an Aluminator and a new set of Boss heads. Spending the money to rebuild, trying to assemble it yourself or having a shop that may or may not have the experience with these engines and hoping the original parts are put back to tolerance is a big gamble in my opinion.
Hopefully it works out for you. You do need a micrometer and a bore micrometer and start measuring things. If the journals on the crank are way out of round, or the cams and cam bores are worn past spec you'll have an idea how much damage there really is.
Steve

Funny you mention that. When I took off the intake manifold I thought there was quite a lot of oil in the intake runners and in the intake paths for the head. I wasn't sure how that could be the case considering I have had the PCV delete since about 10,000 miles IIRC.

What my plans currently are, is to send it down to JPC racing and they will ship it of to RGR who is going to turn it into a 3.700 bore block and a whole new lightweight rotating assembly so I might be reusing the crankshaft. I will probably have JPC do a set of custom cams along with some heads as well but that part I am not certain about. When I spoke to Aaron at JPC about the heads I told him that the cam journals had some serious scratches to them where your fingernail would catch on them and he said that Rich is pretty good and would probably be able to machine them so I am not positive on the route for the heads as of yet. That being said, do you think I would still have to do some machine work? I still need to put a strait edge on the heads to see if they are warped.

my bet is the oil pump cracked and took out the bearings. How often do you track the car ???

I was thinking the same thing considering how much oil was on the dipstick when I originally pulled it out to check the oil after the tick developed and found it within spec. So far I have never tracked the car but I do believe that Ford might have due to dirt being in the bake cooling ducts pretty far back like someone decided to create a short cut around the track and go offroading.

If you're rebuilding, either way, you should go with the billet oil pump gears.

The Aluminator SHORT BLOCKS have them stock (full crate engines do not, with the exception of the Aluminator XS).

If you're rebuilding the existing block you can go with the TSS billet gears. They are the ones that FRPP uses for their builds. MMR also makes a set but I've heard some rumors that the tolerances are not as good as the TSS.

And with a nearly complete 180* on that opinion, MMR also makes a billet timing chain sprocket that you might as well do while you're in there. "Cheap" insurance for high-RPM operation.

Speaking of the TSS gears and oil starvation, here is a post I made back in 2012:

Its a lot better than loosing your motor bc of oil starvation.

I couldn't imagine how mad at myself I would be if that happened to me :thud:

Anyway, TSS gears are 100% going in the car or maybe even the GT500 oil pump due to the thicker backing plate as compared to the 5.0.

I think you are in my head right now because I was thinking of getting the crankshaft gear for sometime now due to hearing reports of the stock one breaking every now and than. I'm not a huge fan of MMR but I have to give them credit. They do have someone over there that can do some serious engineering work when needed.

I would go the Aluminator route but I am thinking of Cobra Jet junior route instead haha.

 

[ford20]

Since I was sick and I had no energy to try and pull out the main caps, the first thing I did was get to work on the oil pump. After removing all the screws for the oil pump I opened her up hoping to find it shattered or cracked but as usual I was let down here. Here is what it looked like when I opened it up.



After taking a good look at it I didn’t see any cracks or anything like that but I did notice what we now know is bearing material on the inner and outer gears of the oil pump. I don’t see any scratches, cracks, gouges, brakes etc. in the oil pump gears so they should be good even though they will be being replaced in the build with a set of TSS gears.




Once I gained my strength back I decided to finish off tearing the block down to nothing, so I got to work on pulling the last 2 caps out. #4 came out fairly smooth (about 5 minutes of back and forth while pulling up at the same time) while #5 was decidedly more stubborn. In all honesty I felt like blowing it out with some C4 since it seemed to be coming out 1/16th of an inch every 4 minutes. After quite some time and wrestling, out it came and I was able to take a look at the crank. I didn’t notice any odd or unusual marks outside of what appears to be some marks from when the crankshaft was balanced so I didn’t take any pictures. But if you guys want pictures of my shaft you will have to get in line.

Anyway, I pulled out the bearings and from the top they looked decent, some minor scoring on them but the bottom side looked like there were some wear marks on them.










I tried to get a picture of all of them together to save some space but you can see for yourself. #3 & #4 both had the part numbers wiped out from them and it looks like the little tab was being worn down as well. All of the caps had these weird spots on the bottom that were completely smooth as opposed to this criss-cross pattern that seems to be made that way. If you look at the overhead view you can somewhat make out what I am talking about especially looking at the right hand side of the #3 bearing (order goes left to right so #1 on the far left and #5 on the far right).






Can anyone tell me if this is normal? It looks like there is some sort of scoring on the #5 main (I guess that is what you would call it).



Outside of that the block is completely torn down with nothing left on it. Now we are going onto the cleaning phase. I think that the internal side of cleaning will be taken care of when it comes time to machine the block as well put the liners in it but I will find out for sure when I get the quote from JPC.

• Oil Pump – 8 x T30
• Rear Main Seal Plate 6 x 10mm