Hi. New member here. Want to share pics of my project, and learn new stuff from everyone else. My goal is to put lots of pics on this thread, as I know everyone loves pics. First a little background. I have zero experience working on modern Ford engines, so be patient and help me out. I come from a Mopar background. (sorry ) My brother Ryan, owns Shady Dell Speed Shop, and specializes in small block mopar racing engines. He will be doing 99% of the work, so I can't take much credit. That is where all the work will be done at. Ok, so here goes my story. Back in Feb of this year, my wife and I bought a 2008 Expedition EL, Eddie Bauer 5.4L 3 valve, with 106,000 miles. I live in PA, but I bought it from Lakeview Ford in Michigan and had it shipped to me. (long story) Got it, everything seemed fine, runs great. Drive it for a month. Check the oil. Not even reading on the dipstick. 2 quarts low. Oh boy. Drive some more...low again. Turns out it is burning 2 quarts of oil every 1000 miles. Something is wrong. Don't know what. What to do? Keep adding oil as needed. Changed oil. 5W-20 conventional. Same deal. 2 quarts per 1000 miles. Had the oil analyzed at blackstone labs twice. Nothing showed up. Runs great until this month. Going up a mountain...starts knocking...looses power...check engine light comes on....check engine light flashes.....engine really not happy. Get it home, take it to my Ford dealer to be looked at. They tell me that it fails the leak down test in three cylinders. Oh, great. So right now it has 114,000 miles on it, so I have put 8,000 miles on it since I bought it. So I had a local shop pull the motor out for me, and I took it to my brothers shop to tear into. So come along with me for the ride....

 

 

 

 

 

Number 8 cylinder has been burning the most oil, as can be seen in this pic...

 

Close up of chamber #8

 

Piston from cylinder #8

 

...and we find the problem!!!!


What is missing from this picture?

look close at the oil ring......

 

Any progress and do you have any plans of adding power or just a stock rebuild

 

I need to take some progress pics soon. I will. This will be a stock rebuild, no power added for this motor. Although it would be fun to build one of these for power. I would like to port a pair of these heads for someone out there. I would give somone a good price on port work. E-mail me at dkj103@psu.edu if anyone is interested and we can talk more.

Ok. This is where we are at right now. All of the new parts are in.
Master Engine Kit: $1,046.09
0.020 over pistons
piston pins
locks
moly rings (This time we will make sure they are all on FORD)
timming gears
timing chains
timming tensioners
torque to yield head bolts $77.33
lifters
one exhaust valve to replace #8
Fel Pro gasket kit
valve seals
oil pump

From our local Ford dealer (state college Ford):
Rod bolts $36.26
cam phasers pair $465.26
exhaust manifold stud kit $52.28

Machine work:
Bore block 0.020 over and hone
Deck block
hot tank and bead blast heads
cut valve 6 mm seats
take 0.010 off valve stems because the seats were sunk 0.010 for valve job
polish cams
polish crank
Check rods for out of round: Max was 0.0008

And borrow Ford service manual from local dealer for the torgue specs and cam timing info.

That is where we are at as of today. I will take a bunch of pics and post as soon as I can.

 

Nice. Might pick up a few ponies with the over bore and block decking but a nice set of ported heads would be nice.

 

we went 0.020 over to get all the cylinders nice and straight. I really want nice ring seal this time and I can't wait to see how my oil consumption turns out to be after this rebuild. I will try to make an update post in the future to report how the engine is doing. I will get the oil analyzed and post the results also in the future. I am going to have to decide what oil i want to run in this engine moving forward. I haven't thought about it yet.

 

Why wouldn't you just use 5w20 like recommended

 

I definitely am going to use 5W-20. No question about that. The big question is synthetic vs conventional. I use both depending on what I am putting it in.

I just got the bill for my parts. All of the above listed parts came up to $1,677. That is just parts, no machine work.