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Ford Explorer Community - Maintenance - Modifications - Performance Upgrades - Problem Solving - Off-Road - Street
Explorer Forum Covers the Explorer ST, Explorer Sport, Explorer Sport Trac, Lincoln Aviator, Mercury Mountaineer, Mazda Navajo, Ford Ranger, Mazda Pickups, and the Ford Aerostar
Quick question...
When you install the flywheel bolts, are you using any loctite? The question was asked in my thread, and since you are right at that point in your build you are the prefect person to ask.
Quick question...
When you install the flywheel bolts, are you using any loctite? The question was asked in my thread, and since you are right at that point in your build you are the prefect person to ask.
Went this morning and picked up the dowels at Fairview Ford in San Bernardino and then got the clutch and pressure plate installed. Then I dropped the engine in. It took a little while to get it all lined up by myself. Normally my wife would come out and help but she has been in Spain for the past week to watch her cousin play in a professional waterpolo tournament. Her cousin plays for France. Anyways I was able to get it installed. Below are a couple pictures I took right after I got it in. I don't have all that much left to do. I need to finish bolting up the exhaust, upper intake, TB, supercharger inlet and outlet tubing, radiator hoses, starter, distributor, etc. I should be able to finish it up in 3 hours or so. So it should be running tomorrow.
Well, it's running. I finished installing everything on Saturday but ran into some issues. One issue was that when I went to bolt the upper intake to the lower two studs pulled out. I had to take it back apart and drill, tap and install helicoils. It was dark by the time I finally fired the engine and after setting the timing it seemed to be idling fine. On Sunday I took it for a drive and knew right away that something wasn't right. The car wasn't running on all cylinders. So I pulled all the new plugs to see how they looked. They all looked okay. I ran out of time to do anything else to it but I had time this morning.
So this morning I pulled all the plugs again and did a compression test which came out fine. I also tested each plug by hooking it up to the Explorer to make sure it was sparking. They were all good too. Then I installed new plug wires. I had used the old ones because the new ones I ordered from Summit Racing hadn't arrived yet. The issue turned out to be the wires and it is running great. It has way more torque than it did with the 302. I've only given it half throttle but even with that it breaks the tires loose in second gear. I've also not taken it above 4500 rpms yet until I get it tuned. I'll drive it around easy until then. With Christmas coming up I may have to wait until after New Years.
I'll have to get some video up of it running. The new cam doesn't sound all that much different than the old one. It has less lope but it also pulls 6 inches more vacuum at idle.
So I thought the issue was the wires. I drove the car to the store and about half way there it started running rough again. So I either have a bad plug or the TFI is bad. It could be the TFI since I washed the engine bay while the engine was out and the TFI sits in an area that would have retained water for a little while. I have another set of plugs so I'll install those this weekend and also pick up a new TFI since they are fairly cheap.
After more troubleshooting I discovered that it is a vibration and not a misfire. I pulled the trans yesterday to make sure that the flywheel was a 28oz and not a 50oz and it is the correct 28oz. So I called Coast High Performance today and they want me to bring the flywheel and harmonic balancer down to them so they can check them. I'm going to do that on Friday. If both of those balance out fine then I'm going to have to pull the engine to disassemble it and take the rotating assembly back to them to have it rebalanced. I really hope that it is just the flywheel or balancer. The balancer is made by Pro Street and I read online that people have had issues with them being off and causing a vibration so I'm hoping that is my case. We used the same brand balancer on my nephews 331 build though and it didn't have any issues.
After more troubleshooting I discovered that it is a vibration and not a misfire. I pulled the trans yesterday to make sure that the flywheel was a 28oz and not a 50oz and it is the correct 28oz. So I called Coast High Performance today and they want me to bring the flywheel and harmonic balancer down to them so they can check them. I'm going to do that on Friday. If both of those balance out fine then I'm going to have to pull the engine to disassemble it and take the rotating assembly back to them to have it rebalanced. I really hope that it is just the flywheel or balancer. The balancer is made by Pro Street and I read online that people have had issues with them being off and causing a vibration so I'm hoping that is my case. We used the same brand balancer on my nephews 331 build though and it didn't have any issues.
I heard back from CHP today and thankfully it was the flywheel that was off. They corrected it and are shipping it and the harmonic balancer back to me today.
Back to the broken easy out, I've had good luck taking a punch and breaking the easy out into small pieces and pulling it out. They are so hard that they are very brittle and break much easier than you would think.
I tried that and it just kept bending the end of the punch. I would have welded a nut to it if I'd had my welder here but someone is borrowing it. I was able to get it out anyways so all's good.
I got the trans installed and the vibration is gone but the car still wasn't running right. I had a new set of plugs so I installed those. While removing the old ones I found that cylinder 4 had a bad plug. It ran better with the new plugs but still wasn't right. So I bumped the fuel pressure up and that helped a lot. It still isn't perfect but I think it just needs to be tuned.
