Time for a new motor

Sierra3

New member
I’ve been gone for a while taking care of things after SSHS14 catching up in school and getting finals out of the way for school.

Took the car out about a month or two ago and did bad things to it. Well, fun for me, bad for the car. Long story short, I think I blew the head gasket on driver’s side out hot dogging it around on the street (those long deserted back roads are much too tempting to play MPG watching games). After I passed 5 cars at once that were g heading up a long bridge over the ocean, (thinking to myself holy crap this thing pulls like a monster! Trying to keep it going in straight line, then) BAM, POP and the dreaded white smoke and burnt oil smoke comes pouring out right side. So I pulled over, watch the 5 cars I just passed come back by me through the smokescreen honking, checked the oil, and brought it back to the garage here.

3 or 4 weeks of wondering what happened and waiting for time off to mess with it tonight finally came. Whipped out my new compression test gauge and fittings kit, and got to work tearing it down. After cleaning out the oil on plug number 1 and 8 from a leaking PCV filter setup, I was able to get all the plugs removed, throttle body fully opened, all electronics and coils disconnected, and compression testing started and here are the results.

I know you’re supposed to do compression checks with engine fully warmed up, I wasn’t about to let the thing idle and smoke up the garage. (the damage here is already done, so I’m just interested in the numbers to see what we’ve got). So all these are done with cold engine, just plugging it in and 6-8 cycles of rotation each. I then set the phone to 2 minutes for timers on each leak down. Then after that I wetted each cylinder with oil squirts, and redid all the tests in same order.

Basically I think im just looking at worn rings and possibly a blown head gasket between cylinders 7 &8. Let me know what you guys think. I had already made up my mind to rebuild the other Teksid block from the other Mark with all forged internals, but this just pushes up the time frame faster now. Check out my numbers. I have no idea what’s up with cylinder 8. All of the cylinders held their pressures fine and hardly leaked down but number 8 only made 30psi????? haha kind of lost on that one. Did number 8 twice. Well know for sure when i get it out of there, tore down and inspected. Ok, here’s a pic of my notebook readings. 20141229_194414.jpg
 

chris2523

New member
ooooh yep.
cylinder 8 is the hot one too.
time for disassembly.

did you find any oil in the coolant or coolant in the oil?
 

Sierra3

New member
Nope, not going to rebuild this one. Starting fresh with one of the real Teksid blocks with all new parts. Pretty sure this isnt what i thought i bought and paid for many years ago. I'll know for sure when we get the heads off of it. Supposedly this motor is a 2001 SVT Cobra reman from FORD. Bought it way back in the day before i knew more about them. I'm thinking the seller just slapped these DOHC heads onto a different engine. We will see when it comes apart. Surely a reman would last more than 4 years or so.
 

Sierra3

New member
Ouch. Sorry man. Btw, just curious, what's your major?
Well it needed to be done anyways. That motor wouldn't last forever considering how tight we wound it up. Needs more ass on the bottom end to take it. We found alot of things that could be changed for the better in this buildup. I'm majoring in Engineering Technology - Digital Design & Modeling Specialization. AutoCAD 2014-2015 and Solidworks 2013-2014 Suites ect. I have a 3D printer im making prototypes with currently. Working on some pretty sweet projects for our Marks at present.
 
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Sierra3

New member
Sorry to hear this Jeff. :(

Let me know if I can help you get it back on the road.
hehe Thanks Mike. Nothing to be sorry about really. You beat them and sometimes they break. Then you gotta fix them stronger. (putting on my tiny Tim voice) " A new engine for timmy on Christmas?" haha yeppers. Thats the plan. I'll get it sorted out. I'm going over to my contractor buddys house today to talk about how many beams i would need to put across m garage in the attic to be able to hold about 2000lbs or if its structurally possible to hold the weight on a hip roof. Basically so i can pull this sucker in my garage without having to drop it off at dealership and pay for the swap out. I have also got a swing set steel thing built out at the property that will need to be strengthened and widened to accommodate the Mark to do it. Then we wont need the garage attic mod. There is a lot of stuff i need to change/upgrade before the new motor goes in as well. They wont mess with the little stuff that needs to be done/corrected. Do it right or don't do it at all i say.
 

enriquei

New member
Well it needed to be done anyways. That motor wouldn't last forever considering how tight we wound it up. Needs more ass on the bottom end to take it. We found alot of things that could be changed for the better in this buildup. I'm majoring in Engineering Technology - Digital Design & Modeling Specialization. AutoCAD 2014-2015 and Solidworks 2013-2014 Suites ect. I have a 3D printer im making prototypes with currently. Working on some pretty sweet projects for our Marks at present.
Sick. Let me know if you want help... I have access to a 3d printer on campus too.
 

driller

El Presidente
Sorry to hear of your bad experience Jeff. :(

What compression tester did you use?

The reason I ask is I rigged mine to do a leak down test and found that there is a schrader valve in the gauge which effectively acts as a check valve holding the highest recording. The reason I suspect that is your hold readings are virtually identical to the initial readings.

You seem intent to pull the engine and tear it down (not that I blame you), but it would be interesting to do a leak down test as well as a borescope video in cylinder #8 before you yank it. I would guess while you may have a blown head gasket, I do not believe it is between cylinders since the adjacent cylinder pressure seem fine. If it were mine, I'd suspect a piston/ring failure.

A leak down test may give you more insight. At least then you could eliminate 2 of the 3 possibilities (if that matters). :eek:
 

Sierra3

New member
Sorry to hear of your bad experience Jeff. :(

What compression tester did you use?

The reason I ask is I rigged mine to do a leak down test and found that there is a schrader valve in the gauge which effectively acts as a check valve holding the highest recording. The reason I suspect that is your hold readings are virtually identical to the initial readings.

You seem intent to pull the engine and tear it down (not that I blame you), but it would be interesting to do a leak down test as well as a borescope video in cylinder #8 before you yank it. I would guess while you may have a blown head gasket, I do not believe it is between cylinders since the adjacent cylinder pressure seem fine. If it were mine, I'd suspect a piston/ring failure.

A leak down test may give you more insight. At least then you could eliminate 2 of the 3 possibilities (if that matters). :eek:
Yep, youre right John. Ill have to redo the test while holding in the release button. Noticed it last night playing with the set. Here's a pic of the set. Well 30psi and the fact that my whole right side exhaust has a thin coating of black oil all the way to tailpipe means something bad happened in there. So its getting pulled for inspection. lol. It should have been running pig rich as we had it set for the dyno flogging as my injectors were at 105 percent duty cycle, so we left it running rich to be safe untill i came back up there with a set of 60lbs injectors or bigger, i was used to the black dry soot in the pipes, not fresh stinky oil back there.
I was thinking the same exact thing on the bore scope. That is a very cool toy i have not yet gotten for the garage. I know there only about 79.00 for a cheap one, but haven't shopped for one yet. I was thinking that when i was shooting my little LED penlight down the spark plug holes to look at the pistons. haha. Definitely worn rings. I actually watched the needle go down after a while but used 2 minutes as my baseline for all the reads. yep, its a pretty nice set. It has the pop off pressure release so it can hold the highest reading. i used this remote starter i modified i bought at auto zone. I cut the cord off and put twice the thickness gauge wire soldered in there with heat shrink and upgraded the cheap connections they had on it. The number 8 is toasty black oil and scum burnt onto the top of the piston i can see from the hole. Its either cooked coolant or burnt carbon resin on there. I started the tear down of the Texsid block today and got it ready on the second engine. Nothing will be used from this engine except the block itself. Ill send the mustang tumble port heads out to be redone and also stuff the block full of forged goodies. Then ill know for sure what im starting with.
20141229_190955.jpg
 

Sierra3

New member
20141220_201051.jpg
This is my remote starter i modded with thicker cable and double the length to 12'. It only came with like 4 feet of cable. Heck with only 4 feet of cable it could only do the cars with the old school solenoids under the hood like the old Mustangs had. Good luck trying that with a GM with solenoid on the starter way under there and still be able to stand under the hood to mess with stuff. It wouldn't reach. I know they did it for heat buildup and poor connectors they had crimped and soldered in there. It wouldn't take it, so i cut theirs off and upgraded those as well. The old cable I cut off is under the new one.
 

Sierra3

New member
20141230_141842[1].jpg Looks ugly now, but not when they get done with it. Heads are all off now and nothing left but the block pistons and rods. This is the last pic i took today before i had to go home and get my Harmonic balancer puller, so i could get the front timing cover off and the chains and gears. My cousin didn't have the new metric style you need for these motors. Came back and finished it up tonight. This engine was ALOT cleaner than the other one i sent out for cleaning previously. i dont know what kind of oil they used, but it was CLEAN inside. No sludge anywhere and nice green coolant still inside. This one has been sitting in that shop for like a year on that engine stand. LOL.
 

Sierra3

New member
That would be cool. What is your limit on sizes for your one at school? Mine here at home only can do 6X6X8" or so. It's a small one. Makerbot Replicator 2. But it works flawless. Can yours at school print bigger things? I can send out designs to companies out there that charge you to print on their big 10,000.00 printers, but problem is when you're working on prototypes that are not yet ready for the public and in testing stages getting out ahead of time.
 

enriquei

New member
That would be cool. What is your limit on sizes for your one at school? Mine here at home only can do 6X6X8" or so. It's a small one. Makerbot Replicator 2. But it works flawless. Can yours at school print bigger things? I can send out designs to companies out there that charge you to print on their big 10,000.00 printers, but problem is when you're working on prototypes that are not yet ready for the public and in testing stages getting out ahead of time.
I'm not sure. Haven't actually used em yet... am planning on doing that next quarter. I know we have at least 2-3 on campus. One is a Makerbot Replicator 2x (same as yours??)
Graphic Arts has one too, but it's for department use only, I think... Architecture has a third 3d printer. I'm unsure of the model, and they're hush hush about it which makes me think it's also only for departmental use, but if it's open to the college that'd include me.
 

driller

El Presidente
FYI... I searched my emails and found where I ordered the borescope I bought...

1 of IMAGE Waterproof Inspection Camera Borescope With Recordable 2.7" TFT-LCD Detachable Monitor (9MM LED Lens) + 2GB Micro SD Memory Card $116.99
Good enough to see the top of the pistons and bore walls. You can record the video on the SD card and view it on a PC with a bigger monitor.
 
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