[euro-bred]

Got the engine apart now. Found some weird stuff, but I'll get to that in a minute.

When I took the head off, I noticed there was a LOT of carbon build up since March. There was some times where I didn't know my injectors were stuck open so I had some cylinder wash, and lots of tuning trial and error. I'm not too alarmed about the carbon, but you can see that cylinder 3 was wet for some reason. The following pictures are in order from cylinder 1 through 4.

After that, I pulled out the pistons and rods. I'm still waiting on the new rods but I will hone my cylinders then start gapping the rings accordingly. In number 1 and number 3 cylinders about halfway down I noticed a horizontal blemish. I'm hoping the hone will clear it up but should I first try something else before I use anything abrasive?

 

[euro-bred]

Honed my cylinders and I found some deep scratches in number 4. My fingernail can catch on them but they are at the top and only half an inch long. I'm not going to fight with them because they are only at the top and not much will leak through. I'm going through the process of cleaning the pistons and removing the rods then gapping the rings as I go. The top ring on number 1 is right at 0.018 and when I went to gap the second ring it gapped at 0.022 out of the box. Larger gap than I wanted. I wanted to gap it to 0.020. Oh well.

Oh! And as I was taking off the rods from the pistons something caught my eye and I wanted to share it. I thought Tom might get a kick out of this since he's been tuning the car. In this picture it's showing number 3 and 4 rods side by side. See anything weird??

Yep! Number 3 had a bent rod! I can't believe I've been driving it like that. I guess that's what you sometimes get when you but a junkyard engine. Good thing I have new rods on the way.

This picture shows how nicely the pistons are cleaning up. A little wd-40 and a scotchbrite pad makes them glisten. Still a long way to go, but making progress.

 

[euro-bred]

Last night I cleaned all the carbon off of the pistons, so now they all look new. I also gapped all the rings. The rings aren't file-to-fit, but I still wanted them to have a big enough gap for heat expansion from the turbo. To my surprise, one of the second rings gapped 0.023 out of the box. That's a big gap for being a factory replacement and 0.003 more than I wanted. At least all of the top rings are now at 0.018. Those all gapped at 0.016 out of the box which was too tight for my liking. Anyway, those are done. Waiting for the rods to come in.

Today I decided to take the valves and springs out. I didn't have the tool so to went to harbor freight and bought one... It didn't fit. I returned it and made my own out of an offset wrench and a extra deepwell socket. I cut out access notches on the socket and used the wrench as the "prybar" threaded into one of the bolt holes. Pressed the spring down and used a magnet to grab the retainers. Getting the retainers back in might be a challenge but I'll figure that out when it's time! I started cleaning the face of the cylinder head with a brass wheel/brush on a dremel. Seems to work well. It was a struggle but I think I got 90%+ carbon cleaned off. I want to get the head steamed but don't want to pay anyone to do it. Maybe I'll take it to the car wash. If that's a bad idea, let me know!

 

[Blokhead]

First I was going to say that's a rust line in the bore from water sitting in it. Then I saw the piston tops which almost look like they have impact damage. Is there a pic of the combustion chambers?
Now, onto the rod. I would almost say that the motor hydro locked (goes with the rust marks in bore), but rods that are bent in compression usually are more S shaped. Rods that are about to come through the side of the block, because the big end is seizing have your curve to them. They tend to tear off at the thinnest upper portion of the rod.

I still have a wrist pin, and upper part of a rod from a 315 Windsor motor that was run wide open with no oil .LOL It came through the oil pan!

I think someone has been inside that motor before you, and fixed some previous damage.

 

[euro-bred]

Lol good eye! When I bought the motor in February, I found out it was from a car that was in a flood. The people at the salvage yard said it had compression (which I later tested myself and all cylinders were around 180 psi. I cleaned all the sludge out, took the head off, cleaned the piston tops, and ran it. It run well and no knock. There are some rust marks I can't hone out of cylinder 3, which was the one with the bent rod, but it ran well, so I'm going to try my luck again. One of the rings broke when I removed them which makes me think it was cracked which explains why it was wet this time when I removed the head. The wrist pin is smooth in the piston, so I'm not too worried about that, and no cracks that I can see.

I am a little worried about the crank being bent but right beneath it was the balance shafts whick I'm hoping took the blow.

I think the rod was bent from when the junkyard tested compression. I don't think it was hydrolocked while running, I think it was from their test by just the starter motor... Or that's what I'm hoping anyway. Like I said, I put several thousand miles on it prior to finding the bent rod. I'm putting forged rods in it, so it should be better after that.

Makes me wonder if that's why I felt like the power was underwhelming.

 

[Blokhead]

Well, if it was my motor, and it did hydro lock, that's a hell of a load to put on that piston. If it was an NA build maybe I'd use it, but not boosted. It sucks, but I'd spring for new pistons to be on the safe side
.
If you did a compression test that cylinder should have been down a noticeable amount. Power would be down also. Crank should be fine.

 

[Blokhead]

I just googled hydrolock, and a lot of picks do show your bend. I was going off past experience with the S shape. The rods also tend to twist which cocks the piston resulting in uneven wear on the skirt, and wrist pin bore. I really wouldn't use it. Pick up a stock used one if you have to.

 

[euro-bred]

Yeah, I did a compression test and it was good, which is why I'm surprised... I know I should buy new pistons but that's not in the budget at this point. I got all of them clean and you literally can't see a difference in any of them. I numbered them so I can tell them all apart.

You think I should at least replace the one piston? I'll take pictures of it tonight. I don't remember if there was any wear on the skirt, but I get what you're saying.

 

[Blokhead]

"You think I should at least replace the one piston? " Yes

 

[euro-bred]

Yeah, I'll probably do that.

One thing to note, the junk yard broke off a spark plug and the ceramic fell into the chamber, unbeknownst to me. That's why I took the head off the first time earlier this year, because I couldn't turn the engine over by hand and found the ceramic was hitting the piston heads. Those are the marks you can see. Pitting. Not from a smash.

Tomorrow I'm taking the pistons to work and I will have our machinist measure them with a micrometer and weigh them just for my curiosity. I'd love to buy a new set of forged pistons but my wife would pitch a fit about that... More than she already is lol. I can swing a new oem replacement though.

 

[euro-bred]

So here's the pictures. The cylinder is number 3.

You can slightly feel a raise in the wall. I can't get it to hone out, so I'm going to live with it.

Here you can see the piston tops and each side of the skirts. Pistons are in order from left to right. They all are in good condition despite number 1 having nicks from spark plug ceramic. Number 2 has some wear on the skirt and I have no clue how that got there. There's no marks on the cylinder wall where it would have been rubbing and no other damages to have caused that. Some of the pistons have what looks like to be scratches on the skirts but you can't feel them at all. I'm still going to have a machinist look at them all, but I think I'm going to run them.

Keep in mind that I've already put thosands of miles on this engine and I bet I could have put many many more. I have no reason to believe that it won't handle what I'm going to throw at it. It might wear rings a little irregularly, but the car is a toy. Not a daily driver, not a race car, just something fun to tinker with. I appreciate anyone's input. I weigh all of my options and definitely don't shrug off advice because I'm still learning. During the assembly I will deep clean everything then lube all parts properly with assembly lube and make sure nothing will be an issue. I'm actually more worried about the transmission having over 220k miles and a third gear grind when I shift at a moderate speed, but that's a project for another day. I'm sure the turbo will bring it to light. And that might be a good opportunity to dig into the motor again, which is why I bought ARP studs so I can open things up without buying new hardware every time. Maybe then I will replace the pistons and crank main bearings. Who knows! But I will continue to post anything I learn or mistakes I make, along with updates. We're all here to learn and teach. That's the point of FocusFanatics, after all.

 

[1turbofocus]

Make sure you straighten that rod LOL

Great Job !

Tom

 

[euro-bred]

Make sure you straighten that rod LOL

Great Job !

Tom

Straighten it and send it! Funny thing is that the rod was actually about 1/8in shorter than all the others!

I have data!

#1piston top - 3.473"
Skirt - 3.501"
Wrist pin - 0.782" (measured in 3 points on all)
Weight - 288.32g

#2 piston top - 3.474"
Skirt - 3.501"
Wrist pin - 0.782"
Weight - 288.32g

#3 piston top - 3.473"
Skirt - 3.501"
Wrist pin - 0.782"
Weight - 287.25g

#4 piston top - 3.474"
Skirt - 3.501"
Wrist pin - 0.782"
Weight - 288.39g

Right now the pistons are in the ultrasonic wash, so the weight might change slightly, but you can see that the number 3 piston weights about a gram less than the others. There is some skirt wear on number 3 which is why it probably weighs less, but all measurements are on par with the other pistons. There are no cracks or fractures, but does have a couple scratches on the inside where the rod had hit the inside of the piston. I have no reason to believe that this one is bad because it's still in tolerance. I'll post pictures when the pistons are fully cleaned and show all wear marks.

 

[euro-bred]

The weight changed a little after the untrasonic cleaning. Now the numbers are:

#1 - 288.20, from 288.32 grams
#2 - 288.15 from 288.32
#3 - 287.13 from 287.25
#4 - 288.22 from 288.39

Goes to show how much crap can rest in the ringlands. #3 is still a gram less than all the others, probably because of the skirt wear.

Here's a picture of how they now look and a picture of the inside of piston 3 where the rod hit at the wrist pin. Damage is there, but I think I'm lucky again.

 

[euro-bred]

Cleaned all the valves. Monday I will lap all valve seats, pressure wash the cylinder head, spray with oil to protect it, then start assembling valves and springs.

 

[WPC5]

Cleaned all the valves. Monday I will lap all valve seats, pressure wash the cylinder head, spray with oil to protect it, then start assembling valves and springs. View attachment 308506

Keep doing updates on this swap please. I have been thinking about swapping from a 2.0 to 2.5 if my 2.0 blows. Also show turbo process because i planned on doing that to the new swap. Keep up the great work! Thanks.

 

[euro-bred]

Keep doing updates on this swap please. I have been thinking about swapping from a 2.0 to 2.5 if my 2.0 blows. Also show turbo process because i planned on doing that to the new swap. Keep up the great work! Thanks.

That's the plan! Keep in mind that this is not a 2.5 swap. The swap has already been done and I'm doing the turbo build now. There's a lot of information about how to do the swap, so I didn't want to flood this place with that. This thread is to show a 2.5 Turbo build and the capability of the engine. The swap itself is cheap and the 2.5 duratec engine is much much more common than the 2.0 and 2.3 engines, so they can be had very inexpensively. I bought mine in February for $180 with 39k miles and I keep seeing them for $150 with around 60k to 80k miles at the junkyard.

As for any updates, yesterday I lapped all the valves and they have a good seat in the cylinder head. Putting the valves and springs back in is pretty difficult without a special tool. I'll take a picture of how I do it later, but I don't recommend it being done this way. Basically I loosely bolt on a 12mm offset wrench for the lever and a modified 9/16 deepwell socket as the compression tool. I use the offset wrench to push down on the socket that's sitting on the spring and use a magnet to grap or place rhe retaining clips. It's slow and tedious and it's easy to have parts shoot across the room!

I'm still waiting on the molnar rods. I ordered them 2 weeks ago. I'll call massive speed system tomorrow and find out what the status is. I ordered the turbo kit 3 weeks ago. I'll call them next week to find out what the status is on that.

Next step is to fully assemble the cylinder head and apply assembly lube to all metal-on-metal parts and clean out the block and lube with wd-40 to keep things protected. I still need to rip out the ac. I'm not sure how I'll tackle that because there are hoses that go under the fender and into the firewall. Nows the time before the engine goes back in! I should also pull off the front bumper and get that out of the way. Never done that before!

 

[euro-bred]

Got all the valves and springs seated and in place. That was a pain to do without the right tools. Here's what I used... I don't recommend anyone else doing it this way because I was shooting parts all over the place when I'd mess up. Of course at the end I started getting the hang of it!

And kind of a poor quality picture of the job complete but I don't care because I'm done with the head.

I still need to clean up all mating surfaces and clean the block up a little, but I'm still waiting for the rods to come. I feel like they should be here by now. Maybe I'm being impatient!

 

[euro-bred]

Had a shipment of some stuff get lost in transit, then found and came in today. Just new dogbone bushings, threadlock, and black rtv. I decided to go ahead and pull the dogbone mount from the subframe and that turned into a significant project that I'm VERY grateful I had the engine removed to do it! The main vertical bolt was seized inside the bushing. Of course it broke the welds from the nut on the top! I had to use the reciprocating saw to cut through the bolt on the top side and had to cut through the bushing on the bottom. Pb blaster wouldn't penetrate. In hindsight I probably should have clamped the top of the bolt with vice grips and broke the bolt off, but I got the same result! Multiple pieces...

Fortunately I already had a spare dogbone in my stash of car parts, so all is good! I just need to get a new bolt and maaaybe weld a new nut on the top. It's a super tight fit and I'm not sure I can get a good angle with the tig without removing the steering rack. I really don't want to remove the rack.

I called massive last Wednesday and they said molnar industries was honing out the last rod and should be in the mail within the next day or Friday. They should be here this week but given my luck, I'm sure they'll get lost in shipping! I called fswerks yesterday about the status of the kit and the company they contract to build certain parts is finishing up on the downpipe and should be shipped out by the end of the week. Still lots of work to be done!

Does anyone know how to disconnect/uncouple the AC lines at the part that looks like a wafer or disk? I hate to cut them because I want it all removed the right way.

 

[euro-bred]

Rods come in today! Tomorrow I'm going to try to get the weight differences between the factory 2.5 rods and the molnar forged rods. I'm also going to double check the measurements.

I haven't been working on much... I'm thinking about fabricating my own passenger motor mount and I have a good idea how I'll do it. I might basically copy one I found online that goes to the newer ST model. I'll make it out of 1/2" plate machined to spec and 1/4 base with some more 1/2" and tig them together. I have some very heavy isolator rubber that I will use for the bushing. Something like this... Similar basic design but to fit my car.

I cleaned up my rear mount, painted it just because and pressed in the new bushings. I think it turned out pretty good!