1968 289 H2O

[CarMichael Angelo]

Well I gotta say, This has been more funny to read than I could've ever expected. W/all the crazy stuff you devised to make your points that much funnier, I will pay attention to your stuff from now on.
Good luck on saving your aqualung.

 

[gregski]

Flat Tapped Hydraulic Lifters

The exercise in futility continued. I pulled out the lifters part number VL-67RH one by one and of course one is rusted, the others seem ok, or are they? First of all I finally learned there are four types of lifters. You tell them apart by what types of tops or bottoms they have. For our inconvenience the names the industry uses could not be more difficult to follow.

Here are the terms as they make sense to me. First of all tapped means lifter and lifter means tapped.

When it comes to the bottoms there are two kinds, flat or roller, period. Flat means metal cylinder chunk the size of your thumb. Roller means there is a wheel or a roller on the bottom of the lifter. I think up until 1985 the Ford 289/302 small block used a flat tapped camshaft and then it switched to the roller camshaft in 1986.

When it comes to the top they can be solid or hydraulic, but that would be too easy so some places call solid [wait for it] mechanical! Say what? That's right mechanical to me means it does something it moves or it spins, or it clicks, etc, but in this case it means metal cylinder chunk basically a metal stick the size of your thumb, it does nothing. Hydraulic should be called self adjusting, (do you hear me automobile engineers) if your label needs a label it is NOT a good label!

So if you say to me that is a hydraulic lifter I will ask you what the hell do you mean hydraulic, but if you say that's a self adjusting lifter I will say, yup sure is, pass the beer.

Which brings us to the 64 million dollar question(s) (hold pinky to corner of mouth Dr. Evil style) How can you test a hydraulic lifter? Or can you test a hydraulic lifter? Or how do you know when a hydraulic lifter is bad?

See in my case I have two things going on with my lifters. Some of them I can set on my workbench, take an old push rod and press down on them and they give about 1/8th of an inch, others do not? So are the ones that move up and down a little bit the good ones, or are the ones that don't go up and down the good ones? Phrased differently should hydraulic lifters move at all?

There are only 16 lifters in my 289 V8 however I am showing 24 below to show you how I numbered them with a sharpy on their buttoms.

 

[gregski]

The Oil Pan

Having plenty of better things to do, instead I decided to clean the oil pan. But dish soap and scotch bright was no match for the crusty ol' pan so the wire brush and the electric drill had to come out.

The last picture shows half the gasket area all cleaned up and ready to go.

 

[65ShelbyClone]

Roller means there is a wheel or a roller on the bottom of the lifter. I think up until 1985 the Ford 289/302 small block used a flat tapped camshaft and then it switched to the roller camshaft in 1986.

It may be useful or useless trivia depending on who is asked, but the '85 Mustang GT 5-speed was the first with a roller cam(and the only carbureted roller 5.0). The '85 GT automatic came with a flat tappet cam and some lackluster CFI injection. The '86 GT got the now-familiar and very good SEFI blah blah blah.

VL-67RH comes back as an anti pump-up lifter, btw. I think I mentioned before that it will be interesting to see what cam is in there...

 

[gregski]

Alternator Off

So I pretty much decided I am going to replace this tired ol' rusty 289 with my tired ol' non rusty 302 (circa 1976, aka the SMOG era and the reason why I wanted to save the 289) that I have sitting in the garage.

In order to remove the engine out of the car I began by removing the accessories and other doodads, some you probably should remove (alternator), other's I just removed for fun (fuel pump).

When I saw all the wires going to the back of the alternator I actually decided to just unbolt it from the engine block, undo the ground wire(s) and tuck it away in the battery tray area and leave all the wiring on it in tact, I will deal with that later.

 

[gregski]

Fuel Pump

The fuel pump was next.

Why show you all this? Well because you get to see what the internals of a 40 year old engine look like. Sometimes you can't judge a book by it's cover. Take this fuel pump for example. From the outside it looks like dog sheet, but it actually works fine, it was spitting out old gasoline when I was turning the crank over by hand.

Anyway you don't have to remove the fuel pump in order to pull the engine out, but I was being curious and wanted to see what it looked like. Also this being a one man job, anything to lighten the load right?

Note what I did with the old fuel pump bolts. I said this before and I'll say it again, sometimes the best place for your old bolts is right back where they came from.

 

[gregski]

My Assistant aka the One Bolt Specialist, OBS

My mom came by to see how I was doing and asked if she could help. Sure I responded, calling her bluff. Well low and behold she was serious. So I put her to work.

It was strange to have someone around who actually knows less than you. Being the two bolt mechanic myself, (see earlier post) I had no problem assigning mom, her first task.

I asked her to remove the distributor, making her officially the One Bolt Specialist, OBS - hey you gotta start somewhere! LOL

I did say I am enjoying this whole car thing, so I make it fun. What would you rather do hang out with your folks at the Bingo Parlor or bust knuckles together? We're killing two birds with one stone here, spending time with our parents and fixing [ahem] dismantling a vehicle.

 

[Rusty67]

I see you didn't teach the OBS the put the bolts back where they came from trick =P

 

[gregski]

I see you didn't teach the OBS the put the bolts back where they came from trick =P

LOL, yup - baby steps, baby steps!

 

[gregski]

The Water Pump

now what kinda son would i be if i didn't allow my mom to wrench on my mustang on mother's day

by the time i got some breakfast burritos for us for lunch (they're not just for breakfast any more you know) she had the distributor and water pump already off

ah yes, finally someone who knows less than I do, LOL

 

[gregski]

Devirginized

Hold on to your underwear everybody what you are about to see is history in the making, I am pulling out my first motor! (OK, well technically what's left of it, LOL) And you thought this day would never come.

I am pulling this 289 out because it is toast and I have a 302 ready to go in. Yes the transmission will be coming out too, geez let me breath for a minute will ya, jk.

 

[Rusty67]

You had a cherry picker the whole time ? I thought you were going to take the crank and all that out and lift the block out bare hands style ! You could have done all that pain in the butt stuff on an engine stand !

Work smart, not hard my friend.

 

[gregski]

Work smart, not hard my friend.

Huh? ... jk

 

[gregski]

Stop Hanging Around

So I decided to transfer the old 289 from the orange engine crane onto the [Ford] blue engine "crate". I bought this beauty on Amazon when it was on sale for $29 bucks plus free shipping. And I gotta tell you it sucks. It must have been built on the Wednesday afternoon right before Thanksgiving if you know what I mean. It is held together with grade zero bolts unless there is something weaker, LOL, and the bolt holes do not align with the engine block at all. But hey it was either use it or toss it, and I for just rolling the engine around the garage it will do.

I know this is not the engine stand for rebuilding an engine, I plan on getting one of them too, cause I would like to flip this thing upside down some day and remove the crank.

Note the BFH in the lower left hand corner, I used it to [ahem] align the bolt holes as much as I could.

 

[gregski]

Crank Pulley Removal

Why am I doing this, why don't I just throw this engine in the ocean. I am going to be swapping it out for my 302 after all. Well because I am learning. And if you would like to learn about engines, I encourage you to find a free or a cheap engine on Craigslist and tear in to it, it is so much fun! Yes you do learn a ton from disassembly.

Ok I think I did this backwards, I think if I removed the 3 small bolts first I could have removed the pulley and then focused on the one big 15/16ths bolt that only holds the harmonic balancer, oh well.

Note: The smart use of a wooden stick to keep the crank from turning whilst we loosen the pulley bolt, brilliant I tell ya, brilliant.

 

[Rusty67]

Greg, you are always inventing new ways to do stuff and it cracks me up. I gotta tell you man, I enjoy your posts. You were right about the 3 bolts coming off first. Its a lot easier to take the big crank bolt for the harmonic ballancer if you use an impact on it. You don't need to stop the engine from turning with an impact =)

 

[zookeeper]

Also, taking the converter off first really makes it easier. That way the engine can be lifted up rather than pulling it towards the radiator support another foot.

 

[gregski]

Also, taking the converter off first really makes it easier. That way the engine can be lifted up rather than pulling it towards the radiator support another foot.

Interesting, to do that one would unbolt it from underneath whilst spinning it to get access to all the bolts? My transmission is seized so I couldn't turn it.

 

[gregski]

Harmonic Balancer - Removal 1

In order to get that cam out I have to remove the timing cover, in order to remove the timing cover I have to get the harmonic balancer [ahem] "Damper" as Ford calls it off.

Now I joked about being a two bolt mechanic before, and stated that the intricacy of the repair can be directly correlated to the bolt count, well here's something that trumps that. If and when you graduate to using specialty tools, that is a whole new level. And in this case we will be using (not a one piece, not a two piece, but a 46 piece) puller. Ok we don't need all those pieces but we do need this specialty tool to slide the balancer off the keyed shaft...

CAUTION: One of the holes on the balancer that you screw the puller into bottoms out due to the weight behind it, so you can't screw that bolt in as far as the other two, this is important, because you want all the bolts in the same way so the puller is level and pulls the balancer straight off and doesn't **** it to one side. [I can say **** but i can't say **** s h i t - WTF?] LOL

 

[Rusty67]

Once you had the trans out you could have turned the crank..... but if I remember correctly, the block was seized too. You have all the pistons out now, you still couldn't turn the crank ?