I've done that before on a oil return line setup like your doing. After it started leaking I tried the j/b weld quick fix............... Well from not being able to get ALL the oil out of the cracks and not clean enough it just continued to leak. The J/B weld stuff never had a chance IMO. But now I see they have under water type stuff too maybe that would have worked better. I ended up taking pan off, starting over and getting it tig welded. Never had a problem after that.
tomorrow is the big day, the motor is coming out of the maverick. Bryant will be busy doing a big job so I'll try to take the engine out myself and ask him for help along the way. I really wanted to do it in 1-2 days so that my car doesn't clutter their shop but I am also pressed because I have someone that wants the engine and is paying $900 for it if I can get it out over the next couple days. I figure I'll disconnect everything on top. Get under the car hopefully on a hoist. Get the T5 off and I might need to remove the headers in order to do so. I'll take off the engine mount bolts. I doubt there will be extra time but if so I will start doing some sanding and body work on the engine compartment.
It was a GREAT day at bryant's shop. I got there at 8am, he was busy with a job so I started out by cleaning up the AC bracketry and installing the intake on the 331. Started out by cleaning the intake, had ARP bolts and Felpro gaskets. Put silicone on the water passage ports on both sides of the head gasket and along the front and rear parts of the block. The intake went straight on and we put sealer on the bolts that pass through the water jacket. It would have been much easier to bolt the thermostat housing onto the intake before installing the intake but we had to wait for the housing. The housing is from a mustang. 185 degree thermostat and we drilled a little hole on top to allow any air bubbles to escape. The housing came with a gasket that has an adhesive back holding the thermostat in place. We used some silicone on the bolts holding on the housing and that's that. I tapped into the oil line so that later we can add the oil feed for the supercharger. For now we just put a pipe plug in.
Next was the AC, here is the bracket that sits on the head. Here is the bracket, sand blasted, cleaned and painted grey. Here is how the bracket is supposed to sit. I now have to cut spacers since we don't have a power steering. A 4 foot long piece of this aluminum cost me almost $25. I cut it to the right length, sanded it down and looks good. Here is the AC unit mocked up on the bracket.
After lunch I got started on removing the engine. I took out the shifter knob, disconnected the battery. I raised up the car. Drained the engine oil, drained the transmission oil. I disconnected the drive shaft, the transmission crossmember and loosened the bolts on the tranny mount. There were 4 bolts holding the tranny onto the bellhousing. There were 2 bolts holding the slave cylinder onto the tranny. Out comes the transmission. I disconnected the exhaust and then brought the car down. Disconnected the lower radiator hose and unbolted the radiator and removed the thermostat line that goes to the electric fan. The entire radiator and fan came off really easily. I removed the wires to the distributor, removed the oil pressure line, the carburetor and the lines to the AC. The day before we had the AC discharged of all the R12. The headers were a little tough to unbolt only because I was being stubborn. On the driver side I fought all the bolts the were close to the actual pipe. But I got them out. On the passenger side I followed Bryant's advice and it was so much easier. By the way, it's not as hard as many say it is. If I can do it ANYBODY can. The trick is to loosen all the bolts as much as possible and then keep loosening whichever bolt comes off easy. You'll get the feel for it. After that we got the hoist We had to fight the headers a little. But they wiggled out of the way fine. I crushed my Air/Fuel meter wires, should have moved them out of the way but I was lazy.
thanks guys. Here is what I need to do still: -sand and paint the engine compartment -finish building the T5 -figure out which distributor we will use for the 331 -install the 331 with the 600 holley carb
the engine compartment is severely beat up but we still made an attempt to clean it up. I just got some touch up paint, cleaned the grease up and just sprayed it down. The white I chose was too white, my maverick is a little more off white but don't know exactly what. bryant said probably wimbeldon white. Got a major leak from the master cylinder. Also have some rust there behind the steering column plate but I'll deal with that . . . I don't know, in the next 5 years. Got all the AC lines and the condensor out. Here it is after 3 coats, looking a little too white. but that's alright what overspray? the wires were white to begin with So we hit a bunch of road blocks. we were waiting for the oil pan rails and they finally arrived so they had to go on. 18 bolts torqued at 9 and 4 bolts torqued at 11. I was able to sell the old engine for $900. The buyer wanted a leak down test, I got to do one myself. pretty cool. it's 2 gauges, air from the air compressor goes in at 100psi and it measures on the second gauge what amount leaks out. First I had to get the firing order. pointed the rotor to the correct lead on the rotor. then you have to move the crank a little to make sure the piston is at it's highest point in travel. otherwise if it's not the pressure from the air compressor will force the piston down. This is the little nozzle that screws into the sparkplug hole Those are my numbers. All looked pretty good, the engine was cold when we did this. So then we had to figure out the dizzy and bryant decided on a 1985 distributor from a 5.0 manual trans. that was the last year they made a carburated roller block. then we got the housing on top and then the accel cap and rotors which weren't the right ones, bryant is gonna order the right one. Then I had to get the correct sparkplugs for the 185 AFR heads. We set the gaps at 0.035 Next we needed to get the flywheel balanced. we took the flexplate that Greg at total performance did before so he can copy that balance. I think he said it's 50 oz balance. Next headache, we go to use the 3G alternator from the old engine and the bracket we got from a 5.0 motor. well we thought the housing was too small on this alt so for $35 we had the housings swapped but still didn't fit. appears that the alt bracket is different from different car models, dang it. Tomorrow I gotta do some grinding.
only had an hour to work on it today. grinded down the top of the alternator, now it fits in the bracket really well. thank God for good tools, bryant's shop has it all. If you look I cut out a hole section of the top mount of the alternator so it would fit well. it's an aluminum housing so wasn't too bad. Also installed the motor mounts. Used red locktite. We are waiting on the exhaust gasket, the collector gasket, we need a small hose to go from the water pump to the manifold. I have the spark plugs gapped. We need spark plug wires and need oil to put in the car. got 2 oil filters to change out after the breakin. That's about it that I can think of.
had most things on the engine and it was ready to go into the car. never realized how much work was left to do. one important thing, anyone can bolt together the major parts and use a hoist to get the engine in the car but man, takes a LOT more to do the little stuff and figure out how to make it work right . . . after 4 years the engine is finally up on the hoist. the ugliest thing about this engine is my weld to put the bung on that oil pan bryant suggested to put the header in place on the driver's side, not bolted in but just in the general area and held in place with bungee cord we were able to get the engine all the way back AFTER we removed the tower braces, helped a lot after removing them oh what was I doing? taking pictures . . . this is it, it's in place. the only tough thing was moving the header around enough to get the engine to slide in place. had to wiggle the oil pan back and forth to have the engine fall in place bolted the radiator and fan in place, pretty busy. kinda messed up some of the fins because I was rushing it $85 to get the flywheel balanced. really great jon by greg at total performance here is where they took the weight out when balancing it here is the old crappy throttle cable. well I shouldn't say crappy. did me really well. if I wasn't a frivolous person I would keep it. but I got a great deal on a lokar set, about $73 with the 3 foot lokar cable and the mount. bryant kept working on getting the engine ready and I worked on getting the throttle cable on. for another $80 I got some oil and valve breather and the studs for the carb while we were at it we sprayed down the old AC compressor, looks awesome doesn't it? too bad we aren't gonna use it. the AC is getting an upgrade after I work some more nights at kaiser bryant got the carb on looks ugly but wait a little, gets better. back to the throttle cable. very easy to set up after bryant explained it to me. I removed the old throttle cable and just routed it through that hole this is the swivel part that goes on the tip of the throttle cable we had to drill a hole on the edge of the throttle cable to get the swivel on, wihtout a press this would have been a doozy it's hard to see but here is how I hooked it up look how nice the bracket and setup is I used the old throttle cable hole to route the lokar cable through the length of the cable has to be adjusted, we had to snip just a little and when I pressed on the gas pedal bryant adjusted the throttle cable so take a look at this. we needed a hose that goes from the top part of the radiator to the thermostat housing. so on our lunch break bryant took me to look for hose . . .I mean look for some hose, you know like tubing. look at all these hose, crazy isn't it? but we found it . . . muahahahha then we needed that little 90 degree hose which we ordered look at this . . . how BEAUTIFUL is this . . . this part really made all the effort worth it now we had to clean up all the wires, bryant did the alternator which was a pain. I did the wires to the coil and rerouted the wires for the AF meter and the new water temp gauge big mess right now that big hole we opened up some more to get the water temp gauge through
A lot of the things you do see is what took the most time. getting under dash, adjusting the throttle cable, running the wires through the firewall but now some more fun. we have had a lot of hiccups with the G-Force T5. I did get a great deal so I suppose it's worth it. But we need to make some more changes still so for now we are putting the old T5 in there but with the new shifter, the PRO 5.0 Here is what we started with flywheel cleaned and place on with the rings and bolts in place bryant put a little electrical tape on this thing-a-magig to make sure the clutch was in place perfectly here is what it looks like, worked well here is the pressure plate and clutch disk that we cleaned up clutch disc in place pressure plate in place bellhousing in place T5 went it great and was in really tight here is the awesome T5 crossmember we made, anyone want one? bolted on the slave cylinder starter went into place here is what bry made, took apart an old distributor and used it to prime the oil pump how cool is this? got almost 50 psi of pressure on the gauge using this expensive oil but that's what the engine builder recommended the distributor is in place, how great is this? but that's about it
