New Engine headaches

[Derek Greenwood]

My X finally needed a new engine so I pulled it and sent the block and so on off to a machine shop. I ported the heads put on some headers and put in a Delta cam with new pushrods. I put it all back together and put it in the car and it leaked oil badly. Well first the powersteering leaked but a new pump and lines fixed that. Then it looked like the rear main was leaking. Out came the transmission and it wasn't the rear main. It was leaking around the long bolt just to the left of the center of the rear of the pan. So the motor got lifted and the pan pulled. Turns out Ford changed the pan sometime in 1994 so the gasket I had was wrong. Ok so put a new gasket in and reassemebled everything and it no longer leaked but the new lifters were noisy. After about 140 miles one was still ticking. So today I pulled the valve cover and sure enough a lifter was collapsed. Thankyou ebay lifters. So I got to pull the heads. Turns out that was a good thing becase while inspecting it I could see that the valve seals were getting beat up. Seems there was too much lift on my aftermarket heads. So now they are heading back to the machine shop for some work so that they will stop hitting.

Now I have to decide if I will clean and reuse my old lifters which were nice and quiet or if I will replace the collapsed one or buy new ones from Ford.

If I had bought it all from Ford to begin with it would have saved me a lot of time a frustration and may not have cost me more in the long run.

 

[Derek Greenwood]

Ford doesn't sell the lifters anymore so I am getting a rebuilt set of oem lifters. Delta Cam says that with factory heads the valve seals wouldn't be getting beat up. But with the aftermarket heads I have they sure are. So the machine shop is cutting down the guides for more clearance and then it will all go back together this weekend.

 

[WilliamWallaceGS]

I had noisy lifters after my rebuild too, but turns out that the indexing tab on half of mine were slightly oversized, and causing the lifters to get stuck in the bore. Just an FYI, if they don't just slide in, then don't use them. I had to tap mine in, but being the first go around with installing lifters, I thought they would wear in. I was WRONG.

What heads are you using?

 

[Derek Greenwood]

Turns out the guide was too high in the aftermarket heads which caused the valve seals to get beat up. When I pulled the heads for the rebuild I had been running them for around 30,000 miles. It was smoking on startup which indicates bad valve seals. I thought the head shop had just messed up or had used cheap seals or something. Turns out the guide was machined too high thus the seal was too high so even with a stock cam the valve spring retainer hit the seals lightly. Of course when I put a cam in with a lot more lift it killed the seals in just a few miles of running. So I had them machined down. I will install the rebuilt oem lifters and the repaired heads this weekend and see how it goes now.

 

[Derek Greenwood]

Got it all back together and other than a leak from a hose it looked good until it warmed up. Then it started misfireing. Turns out the ingnition controller was bad. It has been doing this for a while but would not through a code. It finally did, I replaced the controller and the new engine runs like a top. Took it for a drive and it has a ton of torque. It was way faster than the old stock one and I doesn't need to shift down to get going in traffic. I am very happy with the new engine. All the porting, bigger valves, cam and headers were well worth it.