Stroking an Explorer 5.0L engine? | Page 4 | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

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Stroking an Explorer 5.0L engine?

The motor you are looking at could be zero balanced, or externally balanced at 28oz.
 



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I'm waiting for confirmation on that, but he's almost certain the motor was built for 28 ounce imbalance.
 












And that's basically it? Just making sure there are no other big pieces to the puzzle before going down this road.
Thanks!
 






nope, no other pieces to the puzzle. Those two pieces will make you 28oz ready. As long as you get confirmation the motor is 28oz your good.

Now, the bad news.......
The absolute right thing to do is pull the crank out of the motor with a piston and rod. Then take the flex plate, damper, crank, rod, and piston to a good machine shop so they can balance the crank perfectly to the pieces.

@vroomzoomboom ran in to a balance issue when he changed his damper and had to do this.
 






Dono
Can you tell me the advantage of the link bar style lifters (in your sig)?

Thanks!

Following this thread with interest :wave:
 






They are not really required unless your spinning high rpm. Honestly, I don't really need them.
What happened was I had Ford racing lifters (Non link bar style) and one broke at the cam. The wheel caught in the lifter bore against the cam and seized the motor. Made a big mess (cam, timing chain, lifters........).
After that happened, I wanted the best quality possible.

In my case, part of the issue was that my valve springs were not strong enough. The lifter would loft over the end of the ramp of the cam lobe and land somewhere down lower on the cam lobe. When the motor came apart it could be seen on the cam. This obviously was creating shock on the lifters.
 






nope, no other pieces to the puzzle. Those two pieces will make you 28oz ready. As long as you get confirmation the motor is 28oz your good.

Now, the bad news.......
The absolute right thing to do is pull the crank out of the motor with a piston and rod. Then take the flex plate, damper, crank, rod, and piston to a good machine shop so they can balance the crank perfectly to the pieces.

@vroomzoomboom ran in to a balance issue when he changed his damper and had to do this.

im kinda late coming in this thread. what happen with my motor was a faulty machined water pump was hitting the damper in one spot. by the time i found it, it had knocked the damper out of balance. i had to send the damper to damper dudes for him to fix it, and he did it with fast turn around time. but like dono said, the bad was now the rest of the motor was no longer in balance and it had a very bad vibration to it. what i did was order a new crank, then pulled the motor apart and took a rod, piston, rings, and flex plate to a motor builder to have him balance it.
the balancer i have as far as i know there are 2 floating around in this word. i had bought a truck from a member here on the forum that had a 347 in his truck. the balancer was made with a 28 oz mustang balancer and the trigger wheel from a 5L explorer was somehow pinned to the back of it. both damper dudes, and the shop that balanced the motor for me had never seen one like it, and they were not sure how it was done. the nice thing about the balancer that i have is that i can change pulley sizes which i did because i am running a eaton supercharger on mine and it overdrives the supercharger. the bad new is it also makes everything else spin faster as well.
 






Thread necro apologies...

I may have a line on a 347 shortblock to use in place of my screwed up 5.0. Assuming everything's in good condition and the final price is right - can someone confirm what I'd need to get it in place?
28 ounce main pulley with the Explorer crank trigger - looks like I can get that from DamperDudes for about $200.
28 ounce flex plate that matches the starter. Not sure on the source on that yet...

Assuming I run the stock GT40P heads and intake, what else does that leave? I'd eventually get a tune, and may need to sort out a larger MAF and/or injectors, but those are easy to sort out later in the process. I'm trying to confirm what piston and rod setup the 347 is set up with so I can figure out compression ratio...
You'll figure the compression based on the piston to deck height, the rods don't affect that. Measure how far down the piston is at TDC, .025" etc. That figure is part of the compression calculation.

The stock level heads will limit the power a lot, rpm range will drop by 302/347 ratio, same power at lower rpm points. With stock induction and cam, the computer might run it okay. If you alter the cam or induction at all, then tuning will be needed. I'd use at least a 302HO cam, all three OEM roller cams are PCM friendly.

If the heads are going to cost you much to get usable, I'd consider shopping around for anything bigger, preferably with pedestal rocker mounts if you plan to run it untouched for years. Roller rockers need more care, higher rpm's and time degrade them much faster than pedestal types. There aren't many of those to choose from I know, bu8t maybe someone has a used set they put aside long ago, or are upgrading.

Stock GT40 heads flow around 190cfm, which is low flow. Most aftermarket will start in the 225cfm range(the cheap knock off crap), and the better brands will begin above 250cfm, much better for a stroker.
 






This is the 28oz balancer vroomzoomboom referred to, I had the one he has made, along with one for myself. It's an OEM 28oz unit from Ford, which has the rpm limitations people try to buy aftermarket models to avoid.

The backside of the OEM balancer has enough metal around the whole center section, to allow cutting a ledge to mount a steel ring onto, to make a surface for the trigger wheel to mount onto. This wasn't the first one made this way, I got one from a place up north who located the trigger wheel off TDC, so I had my local shop reposition it to TDC, and pin it. Then he made the second one for me, to sell to the forum member Tim got his 347 Explorer from.

I would have another one made, but only if a better SFI balancer could be found. Almost everyone I've seen has very little metal around the back center section.

347 balancers.JPG
 






wowee good info here you guys are like a SBF stroker database for explorer dudes we are lucky to have ya!
 






wowee good info here you guys are like a SBF stroker database for explorer dudes we are lucky to have ya!

experience comes from breaking stuff......



....a lot of stuff...
hence the screen name
 






I have an off topic question
Suppose you had a 5.0 explorer engine 2000 model to be exact. And you want to use an aftermarket PCM to control the engine and the PCM is built for Mustang TFI ignition.
You don't want to put a distributor in your engine:

How do, or what is the best way to keep coil pack or coil near plug ignition? using the aftermarket PCM that was designed for the TFI ignition

The goal is to retain (hopefully) the explorer cam synchro and crank sensors.
 






What type of pcm?
 






I have an off topic question
Suppose you had a 5.0 explorer engine 2000 model to be exact. And you want to use an aftermarket PCM to control the engine and the PCM is built for Mustang TFI ignition.
You don't want to put a distributor in your engine:

How do, or what is the best way to keep coil pack or coil near plug ignition? using the aftermarket PCM that was designed for the TFI ignition

The goal is to retain (hopefully) the explorer cam synchro and crank sensors.

The Ford computers of the pre-DIS period can use coil packs, by using the Mark VII module which controls the coil packs. I forgot the acronym for it(maybe EDIS module), but it's a stand alone module which they didn't put inside the Mark VIII PCM. It can be used with any EECIV computer along with coil packs. I'm not sure about the aftermarket PCM's, most can be used with crank sensor signals, but which, there are a couple three types. The Explorer has two types, the 96-98 is the normally wanted, three wire type, to use in other applications.
 






Once you get in to aftermarket pcm's, don't forget your 4r70w trans needs to be controlled also.
 






Thanks for all the advice here. In the end I passed on the stroker setup because he only had the crank and block. Adding the cost of a set of rods and pistons for a stroker setup pushed the cost past what was reasonable right now. I've got someone dropping off a low mileage longblock tomorrow so I can get back moving towards having the truck on the road again. Hopefully the details here will be useful for someone down the road.
 






This aftermarket PCM is designed to control the 4r70w as well and it can be used with the coil pack ignition or dare I say LS coils from a chevy.
Ordering one next week, my buddy Brett is at SEMA and he asked the right questions to the right people.
You can see the details in my 07 Ranger build thread
 






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