rocket 5979
Resident Gearhead
- Joined
- April 22, 2002
- Messages
- 3,994
- Reaction score
- 12
- City, State
- Lake Villa, Illinois
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- '03 XLT 4.6
Jimbo1221 said:Everything was going good last night...but we ran into a pretty major snag. I will let Rob explain what happend. It really sucks, but for not having any major snags so far, this shouldn't be really a big deal, more of a pain in the ass.
Yep, we were making great progress. I pretty much got the new fuel pump assembly done. I started fitting a few more front drive accessories. Along with that I had to grind an area of the front engine cover to make room for the 8.5" crankover pulley. It is a standard procedure in the modular 4.6 world when running such a big crank pulley. The crankshaft position sensor and its mounting boss sits right next to the area where the new and much bigger pulley have to go. So a little grinding is in order to make enough space to fit the pulley in there and also allow room for the 8 rib belt too. Lets just say that the particular area around the CPS is fairly thin. Long story made short; I punched a nice little pencil lead sized hole in my front engine cover. It really isn't the end of the world, but it still is a pain in the ass to fix. I am probably going to end up taking the cover back off and taking it to get tigged to seal it back up properly. Once the new metal is built back up, and thicker, I can grind it smooth and then reinstall everything. Nothing major, but just one of those things that gets in the way of good progress. At least my TMU isn't coming in for another week or so which means I would not have been dropping the engine/tranny combo in just yet.
On a more positive note. I finally took a good look at my new crank pulley and happened to notice that it is not 8 rib, but 10 rib. That means that once I feel like getting even more belt grip I can move on up to a 10 rib system that much easier. That is a pretty great thing being that the crankover pulley itself costs $400!
Once I get the SAE30R10 submersible fuel line then I will be able to finish the pump assembly and snap a pic or two of it. It is looking pretty nice, and very functional too. Too bad it will not be seen.

Overall if the little hole in the cover is the only gremlin in this project then I will be happy.