It’s gonna be an off roader/hunting rig

[Blk2kXLT]

Once the surface was true from the file then a new gasket did not leak. Just used dab of RTV to hold in place when assembling.

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

Once the surface was true from the file then a new gasket did not leak. Just used dab of RTV to hold in place when assembling.

Thanks for the tip, I’m pulling it off and taking it to work with me today, hopefully I’ll get a chance to screw around with it. Oddly enough I’m womdering if the leak was from the upper radiator hose to the housing. Jiffy lube got rid of my constant tension clamps and replaced them with cheaper looking screw type ones. I’m going to change that out too and hopefully a combination of these things will solve my problem.

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

I pulled off the tstat housing right before I left for work. I put it in the ultra sonic cleaner at my work with a heavy duty detergent. It ate the rust and I could really see the damage. After a closer inspection of the steel bypass pipe I’m 99% sure that’s where all the coolant was coming from. It looked like this area was going to leak no matter what based on the rust damage. The part from the other engine was in perfect condition so I’m not sure why the guy that did my engine swap didn’t use the other tstat housing.

I ordered a new tstat housing from eBay made by Mr. Gasket for $23, and it comes with 2 o-ring gaskets versus a paper gasket. I’m not sure how I feel about that but I’ll give it a shot, free returns, of course I don’t know if that goes for installed parts. My biggest problem with it is the 45 degree angled pipe that hooks into the upper radiator hose. The stock housing is as you all know a 90 degree bend straight up. I don’t think the angled pipe will interfere with anythihg but I won’t know till I put it on. Consequently all the other manufactures of this aftermarket tstat housing (dorman, gates, etc...) all use a 45 degree angled pipe. Probably because most of the other ford vehicles that housed Windsor V8’s of that time has a tstat housing with a 45 degree upper pipe, just a guess. I’ll hang onto current housing if for some reason these angled styles won’t work. Stick my original plan if filling in the bad spots with jb weld but hopefully won’t come to that.

 

[tripog]

becareful with those thermostat housings with orings the ones i looked at butt two orings up against each other instead of each one having its own sealing area, pretty poor design.

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

becareful with those thermostat housings with orings the ones i looked at butt two orings up against each other instead of each one having its own sealing area, pretty poor design.

This is the one I bought, unfortunately no pic of the back side. I’m assuming there’s going to be a groove for each ring to sit in and then just torque it to spec. I’d prefer it had the paper gasket, like you said it seals up more area. Luckily I can return it if it seems questionable when I get it, then I’ll just buy the Dorman version that utilizes OE gasket. I wonder if you can still use an OE gasket with this housing, that would be nice. I also have an 07 Ex with the 4.0, I’ve had two t-stat housings go bad on me, they were the plastic type. So I opted for a steel s-stat housing, it came with o-rings big and small for the openings but it also came with a cork gasket that sat below the rubber o-rings. I was very skeptical but so far there have been no leaks in roughly 2 years.

 

[tripog]

View attachment 167529

This is the one I bought, unfortunately no pic of the back side. I’m assuming there’s going to be a groove for each ring to sit in and then just torque it to spec. I’d prefer it had the paper gasket, like you said it seals up more area. Luckily I can return it if it seems questionable when I get it, then I’ll just buy the Dorman version that utilizes OE gasket. I wonder if you can still use an OE gasket with this housing, that would be nice. I also have an 07 Ex with the 4.0, I’ve had two t-stat housings go bad on me, they were the plastic type. So I opted for a steel s-stat housing, it came with o-rings big and small for the openings but it also came with a cork gasket that sat below the rubber o-rings. I was very skeptical but so far there have been no leaks in roughly 2 years.

that looks like the one i was looking at too, im not 100% but from what i saw they had their own separate oring groove except for where the two groves met and then it was just open so the two orings were together. The dorman one is complete junk imo i have that one now, i had to sand the new part down to make it flat and to work out tons of gouges in the sealing areas after 5 months the pressed in bypass hose part is leaking from where its pressed into the body. it has a lifetime warranty but i mean cmon still have to lose coolant and buy a gasket/rtv. the dorman does come with a gasket but its pretty low quality.
when the new one comes in post up whether the two grooves stay separate because if they do i bet it would seal up pretty well. we need some quality aftermarket ones because the dorman one is junk and the oem ones are too pricey

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

that looks like the one i was looking at too, im not 100% but from what i saw they had their own separate oring groove except for where the two groves met and then it was just open so the two orings were together. The dorman one is complete junk imo i have that one now, i had to sand the new part down to make it flat and to work out tons of gouges in the sealing areas after 5 months the pressed in bypass hose part is leaking from where its pressed into the body. it has a lifetime warranty but i mean cmon still have to lose coolant and buy a gasket/rtv. the dorman does come with a gasket but its pretty low quality.
when the new one comes in post up whether the two grooves stay separate because if they do i bet it would seal up pretty well. we need some quality aftermarket ones because the dorman one is junk and the oem ones are too pricey

View attachment 167530

As soon as I get it I’ll post pics, but it’s probably the same one you’re looking at.

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

Hey @tripog I got the tstat housing today and was checking it out on my lunch break. It is groved in the rear and I actually think it would seal up well. However I decided to return it for 2 reasons, I feel like the 45 degree angle is to close to the belt which I don’t like. The next thing I had a problem with was the size of the bypass pipe, it was much smaller than the bypass pipe on the original housing.

I opted to buy an OEM housing off of amazon for $63, https://www.amazon.com/Ford-Racing-...M-8592-M90&dpPl=1&dpID=41izDhYTOkL&ref=plSrch

 

[tripog]

Hey @tripog I got the tstat housing today and was checking it out on my lunch break. It is groved in the rear and I actually think it would seal up well. However I decided to return it for 2 reasons, I feel like the 45 degree angle is to close to the belt which I don’t like. The next thing I had a problem with was the size of the bypass pipe, it was much smaller than the bypass pipe on the original housing.

I opted to buy an OEM housing off of amazon for $63, https://www.amazon.com/Ford-Racing-...M-8592-M90&dpPl=1&dpID=41izDhYTOkL&ref=plSrch

thats good, im sticking with the oem one too. better off keeping it clean than replacing it as i haven't found any quality aftermarket ones.

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

I’ve actually become quite good at wrenching on my vehicles, I used to take so much time on the simplest tasks which is not a bad thing but have since become more confident in my abilities. Anymore about the only thing that I find really holds me up anymore is dropping a damn bolt in the engine compartment lol. Plenty of hours just looking for missing bolts .

Anyway I have all my intake and vaccum leak issues taken care of for the moment. My new OEM tstat gooseneck came and got that installed. So far no more coolant leaks, I have two hoses I still need to replace but they are holding for now. The lower radiator hose which I have a replacement for and the water pump lower coolant hose (the bigger one). I won’t bother with the one on the water pump until it starts to leak. The lower rad hose I’ll change out when I do an oil change because the oil filter is in the way of getting the hose off easily and quite frankly I’m tired of draining and refilling my coolant.

Engine has been running as smooth as can be, power and fuel mileage have increased substantially. I might still be dealing with the P401 insufficient EGR flow because of the faulty OBX EGR pipe. I have a plan for that, I will either cut the stock pipe down and make it match the obx pipe the other plan is to use some flexible EGR pipe I bought from moddbox and laser weld it to the stock EGR pipe allowing it to be flexible and an easy fit. It’ll take a lot of stress off of the weld when I go to tighten the pipe down I don’t see why thatvwouldnt work. At least EGR pipes are cheap enough now I can play with a few and not be out to much money. Hopefully I’ll just end up only using the stock pipe I have.

In the meantime even if the code does pop up I’m going to need drive this Ex for at least a week. My 07 4.0 Ex is having a Remann tranny dropped into it this upcoming week. I’m hoping when all is said and done I’ll have 2 reliable Ex’s that’ll I won’t be afraid to drive anywhere. I need to address some endlinks and bushing on the suspension but other than that it seems to be mechanically sound. I did run the engine for about 45 min watching for leaks and then drive it about 20 miles. The P401 did pop up abnormally fast, I cleared the code and have driven about 40 miles without the CEL popping back on but I know that 40-60 miles is about when it should pop on. So we’ll see if the first code was a fluke, either way I’m prepared to deal with it when I get my daily driver back.

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

CEL popped on again but its the same p0401. I’ll take that stock EGR pipe and the flexible pipe to work with me and see what I can do as far as putting them together. Probably won’t have time to install it for a week or two.

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

I installed my stock EGR pipe with the flexible adapter and after nearly 100 miles of driving the cel has stayed off! Sounds good, runs good and I’m getting decent fuel mileage. Sincevthat fleuble tubing is inches long I’ve had to loop it up and over and use a steel zip tie to keep it away from spark plug wires and vac line. I’ve used some high heat silicon tape on the parts that are vibrating against other metal due to the way I had to anchor the flexible EGR tube. So far so good, the vibrating noise is still slightly there but pretty quiet now and doesn’t happen that often. It’s still not my ideal set up but it is working and that makes me happy. I still have another section of 20 in flexible EGR tubing so I might buy another EGR pipe and see if I can do what I was originally planning. I wanted to splice a shorter segment of the flex tubing with the stock EGR pipe after cutting the stock pipe down a few inches. Since what Ive done is working and the extra tubing in the engine compartment doesn’t seem to be effecting anything negatively I’ll leabe it alone and focus elsewhere.

I’m going to start working on replacing suspension bushings and component now. It squeaks a lot when I go over bumps and I can visibly see my endlinks up front are shot. I’m not sure if the ball joints are worn out because I hear a popping noise but the steering is also nice and tight and the tires don’t wander at all when headed straight down a road.

Otherwise it’s been a nice smooth driver this last week I’ve been driving it. It’s nice to feel like I can start focusing elsewhere on the car because it’s now reliable. Im looking forward to getting my 07 Ex back on Monday but I haven’t minded driving my 97 around at all.

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

Well I sold her off over a week ago, it was a sad day because everything had been really coming together on it, I was going to take it hunting this season. It was running perfectly and was a lot of fun to drive, those headers really did add a noticeable power difference. A 23 year old kid bought it for his first car and I felt good about it because I know he got a good deal and a reliable vehicle. Only reason I sold it is because we’re buying a new house. The good news was that my wife said I could have another one at some point . I still have my 07 EX to put my focus on so maybe I’ll do more to that one instead. I just like the V8 platforms so much better.

 

[Blk2kXLT]

Ah bummer. How much did you sell it for if you don't mind posting?

 

[Mitchs07explorer]

Ah bummer. How much did you sell it for if you don't mind posting?

I only asked $2200 and from the interest I had at that price I could’ve asked for more. I actually had a guy willing to go $2400 but he wanted to take it to the shop and this other kid had cash in hand ready to buy. If I could’ve fixed the seats and a few other relatively minor things I probably would’ve asked $3500-$4000 for it and considering all the new parts I think I could’ve got that. I just didn’t have the time to wait for it to sell.