Sounds to me like this is the deal you need. FWIW, the one I got off Craigslist had been listed for $300 for several weeks and I had casually inquired. A couple weeks later, the guy contacts me and says he's going to haul it off to the scrap metal dealer, make an offer. $100 later it was mine.

Just pointing out that you likely won't have a lot of competition for this engine, but still, if it's a well-maintained 125K miles, $250 is a good price.

OBTW, make sure you drain the oil before running it at all. Mine must have been left with the intake open to the sky and as a result had about a half gallon of water in the sump!

 

Well, I went and looked at the engine at lunch. It looks a little dirty for only having 125k miles on it. The oil pan gasket was pushed out and there was lots of caked on oil and dirt everywhere. The oil smelled and felt okay, though. However, I think this engine has closer to 225k miles on it. The engine did turn over by hand just fine, though. The guy selling it might not be remembering the miles correctly or he could just be "guessing". I'm not sure this is the one for me. Tomorrow I plan on pulling the spark plugs to get a read on them before I make up my mind. (That is unless someone else does it for me.)

 

Your experiences continue to mock mine. My engine was also filthy - the big culprits were the valve and rocker covers - after scrubbing, I installed new gaskets for both and things have been clean and dry since.

 

I must say that removing a head on a carbed 300 is much easier than an EFI 4.9!!! After figuring out of how to get to everything, which included removing the inner RH fender, this is what I found:













As you can see, the gasket blew out about 1", which I've never seen quite that big before. That would definitely explain the very large puffing noises I was getting through the intake when I did the compression test, and the popping noises coming through the air filter assembly when running. As you can see, there is some cylinder wear, although it doesn't feel bad, there are no scores, and the compression was good on all cylinders (except for 3 and 4). I wasn't able to verify any oil pressure issues as I don't think the gauge and/or the sending unit are playing nicely. I'll hook up some mechanical gauges when I put everything back together and see what happens. I'm not going to touch any bearings until I can verify what exactly the oil pressure is doing. However, this may change based upon any feedback I may receive.

Any comments, advice, observations, questions are welcomed.

 

As big as that burn-through is, you might want to check to see if the block and head deck surfaces are damaged.

 

Upon a quick visual inspection, they actually looked fine. I will check the block and head with a straight edge before I go too much further. If the block doesn't check out, then there really isn't a point of me leaving it in the truck. So, I hope it checks out. As far as the head is concerned, I found a good price for a rebuild from a local reputable business (Blumenthal's) which includes cleaning, inspection, surfacing, and a 3-angle valve job for $125-150, valves, seats, and guides extra if needed.

 

Today at lunch I dropped the head off at the machine shop for it to be rebuilt. I'm also going to have them clean the valve cover and both intake plenums. Also, it appears that at least the intake has been off this truck before as the lower intake plenum had the rear mounting ear broken off. Someone tried to repair it by using something similar to JB Weld and a metal reinforcement plate that went from under the lower bolt to the top bolt. I guess the thought it would help keep a good seal, which I believe actually worked. So, I'm having them weld that back together as well. I also know the intake has been off before because somebody removed the air injection tubes to the head and installed those plugs as well. I've decided to leave the injection tubes off and am thinking about updating the cats so I can remove the air injection system altogether. I'm going to call CATCO and see what I need to replace my old cats.

Unfortunately, I had to cut off my EGR tube as it wouldn't come off the exhaust manifold mounting adapter. I'm really bummed about this because my engine is MAF and apparently the EGR tube I need is hard to find. It has two smaller pipes coming off to it which feed to the DPFE sensor. If I can't find a new tube that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, I might have to repair my own EGR tube.

 

Finally heard back from the machine shop. My head is dead. They just called to tell me the head was cracked in 5 places. That's right, 5 places! They are going to check their inventory to see if they have another fuellie head cast that will work. I told them I didn't have to have a head with air injection ports, so hopefully that will help and keep the cost down. However, if they don't come up with anything, I have a place I can order a complete remanufactured head from in TX for $300 including shipping and tax. All you have to do is put your old head in the box your new one came in, slap the included return label on the box, and send your old one back, no matter if it is in pieces or not. In all honesty, I hope my local shop has a good cast and that they can keep my price under that $300 mark.

I'm going to have to borrow a straight edge and check the block out just to make sure it is good to go.

On a side note, I ordered my replacement EGR tube off eBay for just over $66.

 

Yup, 96 had a fake gauge. I had to change the actual gauge assembly on mine as well as bypass the 20Ω resistor on the back of the gauge. My truck has a 351 but I doubt the gauges were different between engine.

 

One thing to look into is getting one of the new Australian heads which I believe are cast thicker than the OE heads. They will have the air injection ports, but that's no big deal - just plug them with bolts the same way I suspect your current head was.

The price was only minimally more than a rebuilt head. That was the route I was headed until I decided to just swap out the whole engine.

 

That's what I was hearing. I'll have to find that thread about how to switch your gauge to a true functioning one. In the meantime, I am going to install an aftermarket oil pressure gauge. The PO removed the factory temp sending unit and installed an aftermarket temp gauge, and I'm sure this was done because he had overheating issues. I'm going to restore the factory temp gauge and see if I can find some way to keep an aftermarket temp gauge. It's just a little harder with the 4.9 because there aren't any good places to drill out and install the probe since they really don't work properly unless the probe is in the coolant flow.

I checked a place in Las Vegas that sells the Australian castings and they only have 6 left and aren't sure if they are going to have any more cast. The price for a bare head is $300, which is a little steep. If the compression on the engine wasn't as good as it is, I would be replacing the engine just like you ended up doing. And, quite frankly, I'm not having any luck finding good, lower mileage engines in my area. So, unless the block is warped, I'm still leaning towards replacing the head and using new head bolts while I'm at it. I would use studs, but they are a little pricey and I don't have an easy way to re-torque them without pulling the upper intake again.

 

I pulled the pan today and inspected the bottoms of the cylinder bores and the bottoms of the pistons and the all are fine. The camshaft has some wear on it but the important areas look fine. I decided to pull the oil pump and I'm glad I did because it was pretty worn - I'll be replacing it. There wasn't any nasty debris in the bottom of the pan or on the intake screen on the oil pick-up tube. I haven't decided if I should pull a couple of bearing caps to inspect both the rods and the mains. If I find any problems there, I'm not sure if I would decide to yank this engine and rebuild it or leave it in there and find another engine to build while I ride this engine out.

 

I think as long as you're in this deep, it would be worth pulling a couple to see how they look. On my bad engine, it was clear that there was serious bearing wear (lots of copper exposed), which made me feel that much better about just ditching the whole engine. Of course, you're in the other camp, hoping you won't find any bad news. If you're not going to swap in new bearings, it would be worth torquing the caps and rods just to make sure they're all tight.

One thought that might comfort you in leaving the bottom end alone. Even on my horribly worn out knocking engine, it still ran "good enough" to put over a thousand miles on it. In fact, had it not been for the two broken head bolts that caused a sudden internal coolant leak and massive over-heating, I probably could have driven it for thousands of miles.

 

So I decided to pull the #1 rod bearing today after work and it isn't too pretty:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yagablue/8363200090/http://www.flickr.com/photos/yagablue/8363200090/
Apparently, the PO really liked to push this engine as the top Babbitt material is worn completely down to the copper and the bottom isn't too far away. I will say the rod journal on the crank is actually in decent shape, doesn't feel rough, and I can't get a penny to leave a mark across it.

As many of you stated, I would probably be best finding a donor and replacing what I have. Unfortunately, I can't do that right now. I would really like to pull the rest of the engine and have it machined and simply rebuild it. However, I don't have an engine stand, engine hoist, or a spare truck to move parts around in. Since I don't have any of that, I can't really put a new machined crank in or a short block. So, I'm going to have to go the poor man's route and replace the rod bearings and put it all back together. I'm going to keep looking for a decent rebuild donor, probably reuse my new head, and build my own short block over the next couple of months. I wish I would have found better news while I was in there, but there isn't much that I can do about it now.

 

Okay, here the last update to this thread. I've decided to pull the engine and rebuild the rest of it. I've got questions as to what all I can do with an OBDII MAF engine, so I've started a new thread here: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...questions.html

If any of you can stop on by and answer some of my questions, I would be grateful. Thank you all again for your advice, input, and recommendations.