hi all ~ im new to the stangnet community. i run my own customer shop out of my personal garage, mostly a side business (i work at a normal repair shop for my day job). so its not like im new to cars. but in i specialize in euro cars. i've built my bmw from top to bottom and back to front, and many others like it. but i took a job for a friend on a 90 mustang he just picked up. 92k on the dash, the PO said it was all original 92,xxx miles. supposed to be an ex police car. 5.0 HO. body is strait, its a coupe. headman headers, custom exhaust with flowmasters. the red paint could use a buff, but its not bad. i can see lots of over spray, and lots of bare yellow in the engine bay shows its not the original paint. so i've been threw hell with this car....so this might get a bit long winded, my apologizes in advance.
drove it around for 2 days then after spinning tires threw 2nd gear there was a loud clang and it started running like crap and rattling. so inspection began...around 2 quarts low on oil. pulled the valve covers and one valve seal on the drivers side was cracked and pieces of it are moving around inside the valve spring. on the other side a mounting bolt for the very rear rocker arm pedestal snapped off and the arm was laying on its side. also i should note that the entire top end of this car was filthy. new alternator, cap/rotor, wires (cut to fit accel wires that weren't cut and jumbled all over the engine bay), plugs...so some one put one some shiny new parts....but inside of the drivers side valve cover had twigs and leaves in it along with both sides having an amazingly think layer of built up grim. i measured nearly a half inch of gunk in a few spots. a/c compressor seems good but the lines are entirely missing (like i've seen a million times when people throw another motor in, esspecially from a junk yard...)
the tear down begins...
heads off, found out they are E7 heads. pressure tested, valve job, new seals, comp cam's dual valve springs and push rods. the 1.6 ratio arms were going to take to long to ship for my customer, so i put new stock rocker arms in. basically just rebuilt the top end. all new gaskets of course, stock head gasket size. blah blah blah...long story short when it came back together it didn't take long to hear a piston slap. it just got run to hard with no oil. it smoked pretty bad. i tried to tell him to rebuild the motor while i had the heads off but he still wanted to believe the motor only had ninety thousand miles on it.
change in plans...
just happened to find a fresh motor right as we decided something had to be done. lincoln 302 roller motor. fully rebuild by a pro mechanic, put in an old mans car, drove 50 miles and changed the oil. 3000 miles and another oil change. 650 miles and a tree fell on it. so he bought the motor back from the old man for his own mustang. his plans fell threw and i got the motor for this project. fully assembled block and heads together. he told me: the heads are the same as e7's, the only difference is the cam had a regular 302 firing order, but he just put a new cam in his HO, so he put the HO cam from his car in the lincoln motor. swapped over all the accessories, oil pan, harmonic balancer, and timing chain cover. brand new clutch and fly wheel, new starter, new water pump, new 160 deg t-stat, high performance ignition coil, new starter solenoid, msd cap and rotor, new 8mm wires, motocraft plugs (they were in the lincoln motor already and he just wants to get it running at this point). first thing i noticed when swapping motors, theres no dust shield or what ever the plate is between the engine and trans. he doesn't want to replace it yet so i put the lincoln motor in with out it. he figures it was running with out it before, get it running then start fixing the smaller things.
here is where it gets interesting...so my customer bought this slew of high performance parts when he first bought the car. thats where some of these parts i used came from. among this mass is a BBK SS-I manifold/high flow fuel rails/70mm throttle body package. i installed it on top of everything in the above paragraph, using stock FPR and stock injectors. 3 of the stock injectors have noticeably been replaced. but the adjustable regulator hasnt arrived yet, nor have the 24lb injectors. i've done some searching and i know these things are notorious for fuel leaks, but i got that taken car of. the other thing i didn't know about until i got the top of it on, was that the stock egr will not clear the metal coolant lines. i don't know if maybe thats not normal and somethings just wasn't right, but i just did some fabrication and ran rubber lines instead of the meal piece. frees up a lot of clearance issues, its a lot easier to tinker with things with out taking every thing off, and even easier to take things off when you have too.
got it started....it took some work though. when setting the TDC the engine hung up in a spot, and just would not move at all. had to bump it with the starter to get past that spot. i thought that odd. after tinkering with the timing i finally got it to start....then it would die right after wards. if you hold the gas in just the right spot you can get it to stay running. but if you just barley open the accelerator a touch and it revs way up and very fast!! it sounds good when it runs, but it wont stay running. ive tried adjusting the idle screw, but theres no happy medium, moving the distributor back and forth wont even it out either.
i've been over the vacuum system a million times. no vacuum leaks. i know that intake is a lot of air, but i figured the stock intake tube, filter box, and heads would restrict it, and it would at least run. also i figured that with stock injectors and FPR it would avoid having to get a tune before the 24lb injectors and adjustable FPR, but still be drivable. but could it be so much of a difference that it just wont run with the stock injectors? do i have to have injectors/tune/something else to make it run? is there a sensor i need to check that would cause those symptoms? i also noticed that i cant get the service engine light to come on with the KOEO (key on engine off) like it should. so i dont know if the bulb is blown or has been removed, and dont know if it was on originally, i say this because i noticed the o2 sensor harness was not plugged in with the original engine, and i plugged it back in when installing the new engine. the map sensor was also originally unplugged from both the harness and vacuum. the throttle body has a new sensor it in. i had some help looking at it with me today and he took the TPS off and moved it just a touch and the engine rev'ed up high and fast with out the throttle body even being opened. all the sensors are plugged in. the only vacuum line that changed was the FPR was routed to the tree on the fire wall in an empty port. the cross over tube between the heads was reused from the original motor, and its clogged up in the tube, and where it comes off of the passenger side head it's cut off, pinched and J.B. welded. there was no smog pump and since i reused all the accessories i just used the same belt and routed it the same way. i can't think of any thing else "special" about it. if i do i'll post it. i have pics of everything but i gotta get them off my memory card so i'll post those up later. and words of advice or experience in such matters would be much appreciated. im just not used to these american cars i guess...
drove it around for 2 days then after spinning tires threw 2nd gear there was a loud clang and it started running like crap and rattling. so inspection began...around 2 quarts low on oil. pulled the valve covers and one valve seal on the drivers side was cracked and pieces of it are moving around inside the valve spring. on the other side a mounting bolt for the very rear rocker arm pedestal snapped off and the arm was laying on its side. also i should note that the entire top end of this car was filthy. new alternator, cap/rotor, wires (cut to fit accel wires that weren't cut and jumbled all over the engine bay), plugs...so some one put one some shiny new parts....but inside of the drivers side valve cover had twigs and leaves in it along with both sides having an amazingly think layer of built up grim. i measured nearly a half inch of gunk in a few spots. a/c compressor seems good but the lines are entirely missing (like i've seen a million times when people throw another motor in, esspecially from a junk yard...)
the tear down begins...
heads off, found out they are E7 heads. pressure tested, valve job, new seals, comp cam's dual valve springs and push rods. the 1.6 ratio arms were going to take to long to ship for my customer, so i put new stock rocker arms in. basically just rebuilt the top end. all new gaskets of course, stock head gasket size. blah blah blah...long story short when it came back together it didn't take long to hear a piston slap. it just got run to hard with no oil. it smoked pretty bad. i tried to tell him to rebuild the motor while i had the heads off but he still wanted to believe the motor only had ninety thousand miles on it.
change in plans...
just happened to find a fresh motor right as we decided something had to be done. lincoln 302 roller motor. fully rebuild by a pro mechanic, put in an old mans car, drove 50 miles and changed the oil. 3000 miles and another oil change. 650 miles and a tree fell on it. so he bought the motor back from the old man for his own mustang. his plans fell threw and i got the motor for this project. fully assembled block and heads together. he told me: the heads are the same as e7's, the only difference is the cam had a regular 302 firing order, but he just put a new cam in his HO, so he put the HO cam from his car in the lincoln motor. swapped over all the accessories, oil pan, harmonic balancer, and timing chain cover. brand new clutch and fly wheel, new starter, new water pump, new 160 deg t-stat, high performance ignition coil, new starter solenoid, msd cap and rotor, new 8mm wires, motocraft plugs (they were in the lincoln motor already and he just wants to get it running at this point). first thing i noticed when swapping motors, theres no dust shield or what ever the plate is between the engine and trans. he doesn't want to replace it yet so i put the lincoln motor in with out it. he figures it was running with out it before, get it running then start fixing the smaller things.
here is where it gets interesting...so my customer bought this slew of high performance parts when he first bought the car. thats where some of these parts i used came from. among this mass is a BBK SS-I manifold/high flow fuel rails/70mm throttle body package. i installed it on top of everything in the above paragraph, using stock FPR and stock injectors. 3 of the stock injectors have noticeably been replaced. but the adjustable regulator hasnt arrived yet, nor have the 24lb injectors. i've done some searching and i know these things are notorious for fuel leaks, but i got that taken car of. the other thing i didn't know about until i got the top of it on, was that the stock egr will not clear the metal coolant lines. i don't know if maybe thats not normal and somethings just wasn't right, but i just did some fabrication and ran rubber lines instead of the meal piece. frees up a lot of clearance issues, its a lot easier to tinker with things with out taking every thing off, and even easier to take things off when you have too.
got it started....it took some work though. when setting the TDC the engine hung up in a spot, and just would not move at all. had to bump it with the starter to get past that spot. i thought that odd. after tinkering with the timing i finally got it to start....then it would die right after wards. if you hold the gas in just the right spot you can get it to stay running. but if you just barley open the accelerator a touch and it revs way up and very fast!! it sounds good when it runs, but it wont stay running. ive tried adjusting the idle screw, but theres no happy medium, moving the distributor back and forth wont even it out either.
i've been over the vacuum system a million times. no vacuum leaks. i know that intake is a lot of air, but i figured the stock intake tube, filter box, and heads would restrict it, and it would at least run. also i figured that with stock injectors and FPR it would avoid having to get a tune before the 24lb injectors and adjustable FPR, but still be drivable. but could it be so much of a difference that it just wont run with the stock injectors? do i have to have injectors/tune/something else to make it run? is there a sensor i need to check that would cause those symptoms? i also noticed that i cant get the service engine light to come on with the KOEO (key on engine off) like it should. so i dont know if the bulb is blown or has been removed, and dont know if it was on originally, i say this because i noticed the o2 sensor harness was not plugged in with the original engine, and i plugged it back in when installing the new engine. the map sensor was also originally unplugged from both the harness and vacuum. the throttle body has a new sensor it in. i had some help looking at it with me today and he took the TPS off and moved it just a touch and the engine rev'ed up high and fast with out the throttle body even being opened. all the sensors are plugged in. the only vacuum line that changed was the FPR was routed to the tree on the fire wall in an empty port. the cross over tube between the heads was reused from the original motor, and its clogged up in the tube, and where it comes off of the passenger side head it's cut off, pinched and J.B. welded. there was no smog pump and since i reused all the accessories i just used the same belt and routed it the same way. i can't think of any thing else "special" about it. if i do i'll post it. i have pics of everything but i gotta get them off my memory card so i'll post those up later. and words of advice or experience in such matters would be much appreciated. im just not used to these american cars i guess...