I have an 2000 Excursion, well I have two of them. One is crashed and the other is getting rehab'd by myself.
The one I'm driving had busted exhaust studs that I tried to fix. Someone had been in there before me and used a few hardened bolts and some stainless bolts too. I was able to helicoil two holes that were stripped, removed 3 that were snapped off flush and could not get two others out. I busted drill bits, broke taps, and ended up work hardening them to the point nothing would cut into them. So after all that work, i still have an exhaust leak the needs to be fixed.
I have the engine pulled from my crashed EX and will be replacing the manifolds with headers and all new studs.
I do not plan to pull engine apart unless I'm talked into it by you guys.
Both engines have 190,000 miles on them currently.

I work as a traveling automotive electronics installer and get to talk to a lot of fleet managers and mechanics. All of them that have v10's speak highly of them and many have well over 250000 to 300000 miles on the motors with regular maintenance and small parts replacements; alternators, water pumps, fan clutches, ps pumps, ps gear boxes but never teardowns and rebuilds.

So I'm thinking of replacing all of those items plus a new intake manifold gasket and running that. Before the crash that totalled the EX, the engine ran strong, burn a qt of oil every 2000 miles and show great oil pressure according to the dash gauge.

Other than the parts mentioned above plus new hoses all around, cooling and vacuum is there any really good reason to open this motor up do anything major? Rehone piston bores, new main bearings, head gaskets....maybe a new oil pump?
The only other thing I have been considering is time serting all of the plugs, but my last plug change was issue free and I have over 4000 miles on the engine after doing plugs.

Sorry about the mini novel but I'd like to get some consensus on where to go.
My last truck, it took me 6 years to add 50000 miles to it. I have a company car for daily travel to and from job sites.

 

What is the current Engine mileage? I wouldn't replace a bunch of stuff until the time came to do it.

 

Unless there is something obviously wrong with the engine I wouldn't touch the internals, high oil consumption or low oil pressure four example would be good candidates for a tear down but just for exhaust manifold bolts There is no need to go inside of the engine.

And I wouldn't mess with the plugs other then torquing them to 20 ft lbs vs the standard 9-10 ft lbs, this is just my opinion but the plug blowout problem is mostly from plugs working themselves loose and eating the threads that hold them in.

 

Oil pump, timing chain tensioners, rear main and gaskets for all that are the only things I can think of that you might need to pull an engine for later. You don't need to worry about putting inserts in all the plug holes as long as you keep the plugs torqued 20-30 ft lbs. If you don't know the history of this engine you might want to scope the plug holes to be sure they haven't already had inserts in them. If they do, I would want to be sure they are a top quality type that isn't going to eject again on down the road. I'm sure there will be many opinions.

*edit*
also valve cover gaskets and intake gaskets

 

Thanks for the feedback, the engine I'm putting in has 190,000 on it.

The valve cover gaskets make sense, wasn't even thinking about those.

Can the timing chain tensioners be installed without re-timing the motor? Will they be able to be squeezed in there with the chains still connected?

I'll certainly inspect the plug holes for any work done in the past.

Thanks again.
Mark

 

How many miles and what kind of shape is the engine in the Ex you are driving?

I have seen where members of FTE have used a rotary tool with diamond tipped bits to grind the studs out of the holes with success, it might possibly be worth your time to do some searching on the site in the V10 and Excursion sections on this.

This is completely dependent on the health of the running trucks V10... You could also pull the heads off the wrecked Ex and have them re-done and swap them onto the running Ex.

Just throwing some other options out there.

 

Unfortunately, the dash gauge is nothing more than a glorified idiot light. It's not at all representative of your actual oil pressure. You'll have to hook up an aftermarket gauge to have any idea of what the oil pressure actually is.

If it were me I definitely wouldn't throw a rebuild at the motor without a compelling reason, but I'd give it a thorough inspection before determining that. I'd at least do a compression/leak down test, pull the valve covers and check the valvetrain components, and check the oil pressure with a real gauge. If you're feeling motivated you could also pull the timing cover and check the guides/tensioners. If everything checks out, I wouldn't be at all concerned about swapping the motor as-is.

 

Talking from experience on rebuilding a V10... I wouldn't rebuild one unless you have a compelling reason. These motors use oil regularly due to the big displacement, nothing to worry about. Any big displacement motor uses oil regularly.

My engine had 229k on it before I rebuilt it. The only reason I rebuilt mine is because I had to remove the heads and figured it was only another $1500 in parts while I had it apart.

I would fix what's wrong and drive it until it dies.

 

With a drivable excursion and a spare V10, just sitting there I would take my time and rebuild the spare.

Cost will be about what you can get a reman for. The bare block is still available from Ford so I would get it instead of spending lots of money at a machine shop on the old block. If you look you can get a bare block for about $850.

If your existing pistons are good you can reuse them too.

And if you want to spend the cash you can still get a new right hand side cylinder head....for around $900.

However you could have both used heads reworked for less than the cost of 1 new one.

So, rebuild the spare.

 

Thanks Rock!
Just the idea i need, a complete rebuild, lol.

I think I'll spend some time putting together a parts list and adding up cost.

Where would I get brand new block.? Dealer?

Thanks for all the replies.

 

Yup, Ford dealer, shop around for best price.

 

Why would you buy a bare block for $850 when you could get a complete used v10 for $1000...

Machine shop costs were minimal. The parts were expensive.

I think I paid total $400 in labor to have my crank turned, cylinders bored .020 over, line honed and hot tanked.

Parts were $1500 for pistons, rods, rod bolts, wrist pins, rings, head gaskets, oil pump gasket etc...

If you build or buy a reman V10 engine your looking at $4k unless you can find good deals on parts.

If you want part numbers etc just private message me.

A cheaper route may be buying pistons for the 5.4L as they are fairly cheap and plentiful. Same pistons are used in our engines. You just need 10.

 

Those are some good machining costs.

My costS were estimated at:
Align hone 191.00
Cleaning $85
Final wash $20
Bore and hone V8 $200
Bore and hone 2 extra cylinders $90
freeze plugs $27
Magnaflux block $37
Surface block for an ra of 50 or finer $132

Total = $782

If you subtract crankshaft costs as with either a new block or used one the cost are the same, about $75 for Magnaflux and polishing. Your block cost were less than $325. WOW that really is good..

Plus all the machine shops I called did not have even 1 torque plate to bore and hone cylinders propperly, let alone 2 so mains could be honed with torque plates on top side. Cost for 1 torque plate for a V10 is about $800.

Then consider time spent cleaning block threaded holes and after all that you have a block that has a shorter deck surface (which could affect timing), and thinner (potentially out of round) cylinder walls.

So, I guess a new block is just my preference as technically you are correct a machine shop is cheaper.

But please consider this:
1) a new block comes with main bolts so no need to buy new torque to yield bolts.
2) if your rods and pistons meet tolerances and you can reuse the original ones that could save a wad of cash.