MtExplorer Guy
Active Member
- Joined
- September 25, 2012
- Messages
- 60
- Reaction score
- 1
- City, State
- Kalispell, MT
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2003 Explorer XLS
Ok, after several weeks of working this thing, I finally got all of the tools together to tear it apart and there are few things I have found out, the main one is getting the front timing cassette out.
Just a little background to bring you up to speed, I purchased this car 2 years ago, for a very little amount of money, it is a 2003 Explorer XLS model, which of course that the obligatory rattle when I bought it, after 2 months of fiddle farting around, I decided to put another motor in it, so I purchased a low mileage engine from a 2004 Explorer Sport trac.
Last December, I had the rattle start again, on the front of the motor, figured tensioner, wrong! So parked it and waited until it was warm again, so have been pulling it apart for a while now, finally got to the point of pulling the cassette, guess what, can't find the upper cassette mounting bolt! After looking at hundreds of pictures and reading hundreds of thread, could not figure out why this motor was different than everything I have seen!
Come to find out, in early 2004, when they changed the manifold(another story) They changed how the upper mounting bolt, instead of it being inside the head as with other, this is a T-30 socket head plug/bolt that you unscrew from the Outside of the head, it goes through the head sidewall, through the cassette and into the head to mount the cassette, it is about 1/5 inches long. It also has an O-Ring to seal it. Also on the 2004 sport trac cam shaft, there are no slots on the end of the camshaft on the left hand head, thought I would bring that up, as one of the threads I read on here talked about using a long L shaped allen wrench in those two slots to hold the cam shaft for timing, ain't going to work on this motor.
To successfully take this thing apart, you have to have the OTC timing kit to hold that cam shaft or you will be way out of whack trying to put it back together!
I am sure some others have found this out, but I have not seen anything about these small, but very important differences in this motor over the other threads I have seen posted on here!
Just a little background to bring you up to speed, I purchased this car 2 years ago, for a very little amount of money, it is a 2003 Explorer XLS model, which of course that the obligatory rattle when I bought it, after 2 months of fiddle farting around, I decided to put another motor in it, so I purchased a low mileage engine from a 2004 Explorer Sport trac.
Last December, I had the rattle start again, on the front of the motor, figured tensioner, wrong! So parked it and waited until it was warm again, so have been pulling it apart for a while now, finally got to the point of pulling the cassette, guess what, can't find the upper cassette mounting bolt! After looking at hundreds of pictures and reading hundreds of thread, could not figure out why this motor was different than everything I have seen!
Come to find out, in early 2004, when they changed the manifold(another story) They changed how the upper mounting bolt, instead of it being inside the head as with other, this is a T-30 socket head plug/bolt that you unscrew from the Outside of the head, it goes through the head sidewall, through the cassette and into the head to mount the cassette, it is about 1/5 inches long. It also has an O-Ring to seal it. Also on the 2004 sport trac cam shaft, there are no slots on the end of the camshaft on the left hand head, thought I would bring that up, as one of the threads I read on here talked about using a long L shaped allen wrench in those two slots to hold the cam shaft for timing, ain't going to work on this motor.
To successfully take this thing apart, you have to have the OTC timing kit to hold that cam shaft or you will be way out of whack trying to put it back together!
I am sure some others have found this out, but I have not seen anything about these small, but very important differences in this motor over the other threads I have seen posted on here!
