Tore down my GT's engine this weekend...

[Chythar]

I've been getting excessive noice in the engine. It's in time with engine revs, and hadn't gotten worse as time went on. My mechanic says it's a worn crank bearing, but I decided to try rebuilding the heads and replace the lifters & pushrods first. Got it apart, and things looked pretty clean. Though there is one thing that I think is the cause of the noise. I tried to compress the old lifters by hand, and I couldn't compress any of them. I bought new lifters some time back, and using a pushrod I could shift the pushrod seat down a bit without too much effort. Would this be a sign that the old lifters were plugged?

I gotta admit, the engine bay is pretty darn empty right now. I'm also going to clean the engine bay off while I'm at it, though I don't think I'll take the time to polish anything right now. Clean would be nice.

 

[nmcgrawj]

No i doubt it, you cant compress them because they are full of oil. Let them sit for a while and im sure you could.

Be careful man, if it is the crank and something gives on the bottom end, it can ruin your top end...heads, cam, push rods, rockers. Trust me....i KNOW.

 

[Chythar]

The lifters had been sitting for a couple of hours after I pulled them from the engine, would they need to sit longer?

I know about crank bearings going bad. My 94 V6 (bought in 97) had the crank bearings go bad on me, and the clanking noise got worse very quickly over the next two days. Fortunately, they gave way two months into a three-month warranty from a Ford dealership. Total cost: $0. The 5.0's noise is different, though. To be honest, I don't know when the noise started. I got the GT cheap, looking like trash WITH the engine noise. I wanted to learn how to work on the engine, what better opportunity could I get? The guy I bought it from also bought the car with the engine noise, and claimed to have driven it for about a year without any problems.

He was right about the engine noise. I drove it for about a year with the noise, and I beat on it. The noise didn't change one bit over that year. Of course, the tranny decided to give too. I'm looking at this as a restoration of sorts - the GT's gonna be cherry when I'm done. Just wish I had more time to work on it.

I'm going to put the engine back together, and if the engine noise doesn't change or go away I'm going to let it sit until I can afford to rebuild it right.

 

[nmcgrawj]

I dont know...i took my stock lifters out and they sat for a LONG time...days and days and they still couldnt be compressed when checking pushrod length and such when i started to assemble the new combo. The new lifters compressed immediately.