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SOHC Engine Removal/Rebuild/Install - Done!

Yeah I definitely don't have those 2 bolts unfortunately. Been awhile since I used it and i thought i used flexplate bolts but maybe i was wrong. I may have cut them down? I've had that tool for years but rarely use it.
 



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Yeah I definitely don't have those 2 bolts unfortunately. Been awhile since I used it and i thought i used flexplate bolts but maybe i was wrong. I may have cut them down? I've had that tool for years but rarely use it.

Okay - I'll have to buy them. They're M10 x 1.0 x 20MM - 30MM Allen socket head. Even if the 40MM flexplate bolts were shorter their e-heads are too tall.
 






Update 4/6:
I'm still waiting for the missing Allen bolts I ordered for the rear mail seal installer tool I borrowed to arrive. ETA is currently tomorrow. I also decided to pull the trigger on ordering my OE Ford timing chain set, which has an ETA of this Friday. I want to get the engine finished up and ready to be reinstalled before the 98-100 degree GA weather hits. IDK if I'm going to be able to torque the head bolts to spec with the engine on the engine stand, because IDK if I can prevent the stand from moving. Anyone have experience with doing this? If I can't achieve the required torque & angle settings on the stand I guess I'll have to wait until the engine is bolted back into the chassis to finish it.

I find it interesting that the complete OE Ford timing chain set is 10X the cost of the cheapest Chinese-made sets. I know genuine Ford parts are always expensive and overpriced, but 10X the cost of most of the aftermarket stuff? Well, I don't want to take a chance on even the second most expensive timing set (Cloyes). The way I look at it this job is too much work and too much money to cut corners to save a few hundred bucks.
 






I've always used a 2nd person to help keep the engine from twisting on the stand for that last 90*. I've been cheating lately and have been using my forklift forks on the sides of the block to save on labor costs lol
 






I've always used a 2nd person to help keep the engine from twisting on the stand for that last 90*. I've been cheating lately and have been using my forklift forks on the sides of the block to save on labor costs lol

The only person I have to help me to hold the engine is my daughter. Guess we'll give it a go and see what happens. Maybe I can stick a cheater pipe into the engine stand frame to help her hold it.
 






You could always pop it off the stand and put it on the ground in an old tire if you have one. It will be way easier to keep it still but will be at a more unkind position to torque the bolts
 






You could always pop it off the stand and put it on the ground in an old tire if you have one. It will be way easier to keep it still but will be at a more unkind position to torque the bolts

Yeah, I have some old tires and a stack of cement blocks I use as a parts cleaning table (maybe 3 foot square by maybe 40-45" high). I'm sure I can come up with something. I'll see what I can make work.
 






Question:
There is metal rod that runs the oil pump. It goes from the oil pump to a driven gear off the jack shaft. My question is, does it matter which way the rod goes in? Both ends have a sort of spline (looks a bit like a torx bit), one end has a rather flat tip and the other end has a chamfered tip. The rod will go in either way. Does it matter which way it goes? I think the end with the flat tip came out from the oil pump side, but I'm not sure.
 






Looking in the manual it says to just install the oil pump intermediate shaft then oil pump


But I would wait for more people
 






I noticed how mine came out but looking at it I didn't think it mattered. In other Ford V8's there is a small clip on one end like what holds typical lawn mower wheels on the shaft. It looks like an "E" clip, and that is to keep the shaft from falling all the way through on those engines when the pump is removed. But the SOHC didn't have that on the pump drive shaft, on mine. So if it engages both ends properly, it should be fine either way.
 






I noticed how mine came out but looking at it I didn't think it mattered. In other Ford V8's there is a small clip on one end like what holds typical lawn mower wheels on the shaft. It looks like an "E" clip, and that is to keep the shaft from falling all the way through on those engines when the pump is removed. But the SOHC didn't have that on the pump drive shaft, on mine. So if it engages both ends properly, it should be fine either way.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but I found it strange that the ends of the rod were a finished a little differently. I'm going to stick the flatter end into the pump, because I think that's the way it came out. 50/50 chance I'm right and I don't see where it would make much/any difference either way.

Also, I noticed that my Fel Pro full-engine gasket kit came with a paper gasket for the pump-to-block (original pump had no gasket) and a second paper gasket for the pump-to-pickup tube. I've decided to replace my plastic pickup tube (mine had cracks on 2 of its 3 mounting holes where the bushings go through). I don't think the cracks are a big deal and was thinking I'd just use washers under the 3 bolts for support, but then I decided to just replace the pickup tube (pic below), which comes with new O-ring seals. The plastic pickup screen literally rests on the bottom of the SOHC's lower oil pan on small feet/stand-offs, so I figure adding the thickness of 2 paper gaskets might stress the plastic over time. I'm probably just being **** about this, but I hate making discussions that I may regret later. Better to spend another $25 and get a new OE pickup tube. I wish they didn't use so many plastic parts on today's vehicles. Eventually they all break. Planned obsolescence I guess (under the name of weight savings) but really cheaper manufacturing costs, but you wouldn't know it when you have to pay $25-$30 for a new part.

Having purchased many, many new parts on-line for this project another thing that makes me mad is when on-line sellers charge ridiculous shipping costs to put something tiny in an envelop. I've had to buy parts that cost $2-$3 and pay $9.99 shipping. That's no bargain. I wish they'd just say the part cost $10 and charge $2 shipping. I get free Prime membership on Amazon, but not everything I need is available through Amazon. It's like gasoline prices. What's up with the $x.xx.9 pricing on gasoline? Why not just add a full penny to the price per gallon?
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Bit of an aggravating day:
The bolts I ordered for the rear main seal installer tool arrived today. They are the correct size, thread pitch and length, however the Allen heads on the bolt are too tall. This is because the tools original tool's bolts are made with a narrowed shoulder and fit down into recesses in the part of the tool which bolts to the crankshaft. This means the part of the tool that is designed to push the seal in would fall short by maybe 1/16th-1/8th of an inch. If I had a lathe I would have cut shoulders into the bolts, but as I don't have a lathe, I used my grinder to reduce the height of the bolt heads. Surprisingly, this took me a fairly long amount of time to do. The metal the bolts are made of is very hard, you have to leave enough of a depression on the bolt head to still be able to tighten it with an Allen socket, but the bolt head must be level and go down far enough for the seal pressing part of the tool to go down 100% of the way. It probably took me 45 mins to achieve this.

Once I was happy with the way the tool fit, I lubed up the seal and its sleeve with Vaseline and pressed it in. It looks good, straight and appears to be in 100% of the way so at least that's done. I'm debating whether I can reinstall the the engine plate and flexplate before putting the engine back on the engine stand, but I'm afraid there'd be a reason I'd only have to remove it again (like to line up the engine cradle and block). So I'll probably wait and stick the engine back on the stand this evening.

The damn mud wasps are out, so I had to cover/plug every hole in the engine block to keep them from filling them with mud and their evil spawn. I don't want to have to spend another hour, like I had to do with my EGR pipe, getting that crap out of a hole I need to use.

My timing components are supposed to arrive by Friday, but with Covid-19 delays deliveries are running late. I'll see what I can accomplish while I'm waiting.

Here's a good catch I made... My engine's spark plugs were Autolite Double Platinum's that only had around 20K on them (as do the plug wires). I decided to clean them up, re-gap and reuse them. In doing so I noticed one plug had a hairline crack in its insulator. IDK when it got cracked and the engine never had a miss, but I'm not about to reuse that plug. The other 5 plugs still look like new.
 












Have you seen this yet

No. When I was shopping for a new oil pump the only Melling pumps I saw did not include the P/U tube or screen and the listings did not include the part number for a setup for the Ford 4.0L SOHC. Price-wise the Ford OE pump was cheaper, but I thought I'd be reusing my oil P/U tube. Even with deciding to buy a new OE P/U tube the total cost is about the same and I'd rather stick to OE parts as I know they'll fit w/out modification. During my Hot Rod building days I was always fighting parts from different manufactures that did not play well together.
 






I agree use your OEM parts
I thought I'd show ya because that was what the engine reman company used on mine
I was pleasantly surprised to find it when I pulled the lower pan after dataloging
 






Today's Minor Update:
My timing chain kit is supposed to arrive tomorrow "guarantied", but as of this morning it was still in NJ, so I doubt it will arrive tomorrow. Maybe by next Mon?

Today I spend a few hours today reinstalling my balance shaft and new oil pump (both now torqued to spec). Then I cleaned out and bottom-tapped by head bolt holes in the block. The one other part I plan to install today is my oil filter adapter, but I'm a bit concerned that I may cause damage to the green O-ring that goes on the retaining bolt. I'd test fitted it the other day and found it was going to be a very tight fit, even after applying oil to it. I find the green O-rings age pretty well (not loosing they're shape or hardening). If I really feel the new green O-ring is too tight I may reuse my old one. My old large orange/red adapter O-ring seal was was flat as a pancake and the smaller black O-ring was so brittle that it came off in chunks.

If I haven't mentioned it already, I've installed my new valve cover gaskets and grommets and replaced my one cracked spark plug, so the heads are ready to be reinstalled as soon as I get my timing set. I could install the heads now, but I think it will be much easier to install the cassettes before I reinstall the heads. That's the way I took the engine apart and found removing the old cassettes to be super easy.

One thing that I'm puzzling over is that everything I've studied/watched about timing the camshafts says to put the engine at TDC on cly #1 (using the OTC 6488 cam timing tool kit) and then use the tool kit to place and lock the camshafts in the correct position. I've noticed there is a position you can place the camshafts in where all the valve are closed. With them closed there's no concern about valve/piston interference. However if you have to rotate your cam shaft 180 degrees to lock it in place might that not cause a valve to contact a piston that's in the up position? I plan to be very careful about this. I have searched YouTube for head replacement videos for the 4.0L SOHC, but I did not find any that were useful/informative. The one video I did find on the subject made me cringe because they guy was a total bone-head (great advice like, "just reuse your old TTY head bolts to save money"). If I didn't need to replace my heads I believe there are safe work-arounds for not requiring the use of the expensive cam timing tool kit.

Perhaps a way to insure that the camshafts are in the correct position is to lock them in place using the OTC timing tools and then install the head on the block with the crank at TDC cly #1. Seems like that would work.

Update to above:
I Vaselined the O-rings on the oil filter adapter and it went together pretty easily with a ratchet. Torqued to 42 FP and installed the filter to keep the mud wasps out.
 






Interesting, I hadn't thought of the head installation process related to the camshafts. Typical head installation is with no valvetrain, and then the rockers etc, are installed with the crank at TDC etc. I'm sure you have read the install manual instructions, that might be the best way.

My engine when I did the timing parts, I forgot to confirm the TDC before loosening the jackshaft bolt(I was impatient at that point taking off parts). The heads both(the cams etc) spun to an equilibrium point. I didn't loosen any rockers, I did some hard figuring on where the two heads(cams) needed to be. I slowly rotated the crank towards the proper TDC, and the cams along with it(three sets of parts). I didn't hurt anything thankfully, though it's possible some valves kissed some pistons. It's a big deal to place the crank assembly at TDC, everyone should always begin with that, before loosening any important bolts.

FYI, you have a later SOHC right, it takes the FL-820S filter yes? If it was mine, I would locate and buy the older oil filter block adapter. The old one is SAE, not metric, and it accepts the larger FL-1A filter. Since you have the engine apart, it's a free upgrade if you can get the part, no extra labor to install it. The 4.0 engines have the oil filter vertical, and there's plenty of room for a much larger filter there. The FL-1A is a full quart size, the FL-820S is about 2/3 of a quart. In the SAE thread size, there are also other filters even bigger, like the Super Duty size etc, 1.5 to 2 quart filters. I'd want at least the 1 quart FL-1A, it cost the same and is very common. On my 302 I'm going to use a relocation adapter and end up with the same 3/4-16 filter thread size, and a larger filter to gain capacity for severe duty use.
 






@CDW6212R - The more I think about it, as long as the crank is set to TDC #1, if I lock the cams down in their proper timed location (one at a time of course) before installing them I should be fine valve clearance-to-piston wise. It's really no different than if I had never removed the heads.

Re oil filters - Yes, I have a Job 2 SOHC which takes the metric (FL820S) filter. I didn't think about switching to the SAE oil filter and it's kinda too late at this point. Not a big deal. I plan to change the oil in this thing at around 3K-4K intervals and when the pre-oiler gets installed that must add another quart 'ish of oil capacity anyway. I run full synthetic oil with high-end oil filters, so it should be fine.
 






Timing chain kit arrived today (somewhat to my surprise). Tomorrow should be a very productive day.

I wonder way the OE kits come with the bolt w/the O-ring for the front cassette, but not the bolt (or the O-ring) for the rear cassette? It's like when you purchase a new Ford hydraulic tensioner it doesn't come with the gasket/washer for it. Dumb. I'd rather they include these things and just charge you the couple of dollars more up front.
 



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Update:
Like a kid on Christmas morning I couldn't wait to play with my new toys...

Opened up all the timing kit boxes/bags and identified what everything was. The bags have part numbers but no descriptions. I could have looked up the part numbers, but what would be the fun in that? Once I figured out how/where everything went I labeled the plastic bags and grouped pieces together into larger plastic bags and labeled them.

I decided to begin by reinstalling my balance shaft, figuring I'd paid for the parts I might as well use them. I began by getting the balance shaft's gears timed and then installed the chain, guide and tensioner. I'd forgot that the tensioner bolts on using the 2 front balance shaft mounting bolts, so I had to take them off again, even though I'd just torqued them down the other day. Not big deal. I decided to just tighten everything up snug for now and I'll torque everything to spec later.

Next I moved onto reinstalling the jack shaft and the front cassette tensioner with it's guide. I just wanted to make sure I understood how/where everything went. Tomorrow I'll loosely install the front tension gears and chain and the jackshaft gear, chain and tensioner.. Then I can move onto installing the rear cassette. Tonight I'm going to re-watch fordtechmakuloco's assembly video just to check myself before proceeding with reinstalling the heads and timing the cams. Fun times!

I'll take some pictures tomorrow and post them.
 






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