I know some folks will have a fit about this but here it goes. Put your breaker bar on the bolt wedge it against the frame or floor and the turn the motor over with the starter. Has worked for me before.

 

Hey wtroger,
yep, tried that, but chickened out after the first bumpover didn't do the trick. If you've posted this before, it's probably where i read about it. But i finally got the damn thing loose.

 

Finally got back on the truck Saturday afternoon.
I got the bright idea of dropping an 18” pipe wrench down of top of the crank hub. I put the end of the handle under the steering box and frame. I put the breaker bar and four foot cheater on the crank bolt and carefully took up all slack. Checked that the pipe wrench held itself in place and didn’t slip position or start ratcheting and tearing up the hub housing.
Started putting pressure on the cheater bar counterclock and watched breaker bar start bending, very nicely. More pressure and finally got a few pop-pops and I stopped pulling. Put just the breaker bar on, checked the wrench and carefully took up all slack again, and pulled. Crank bolt broke loose as pretty as you please! Immediately and carefully retired the pipe wrench. Used a damper puller and pulled the crank hub off. Had to use the puller, but hub came off fairly easily.

WORD OF WARNING here. You cannot let the pipe wrench grip the tinned metal flags for the crank sensor. The shop manual says the air gap on the sensor is less than 40 thousandths. Bend the stamped sheet out of place and it could wipe out the sensor. Even if it ends up just touching, the constant banging can cause sensor failure IMO. End of warning.

Breaker bar now has a permanent slight bend. Gives it character, I guess.


Well, removed the timing belt. Used a crowbar on the tensioner as per other forum work descriptions. I didn’t remove the sensor; the “slinger” looking piece in front of the crank belt cog pulley (shop manual calls it a “belt guide”) is blocked from removal by the sensor (and notched for the keyway so it won’t spin), but rocks around enough that it wasn’t a major problem to get the belt off or on. Inspected pulley and key as I could, and all looked well.

Replaced belt tensioner. This is a new pulley on a mounting bracket with a roll pin for the tensioner spring. You don’t get new bolts or tensioner spring (not in this Advance Auto kit I got, anyway). Loosen spring bolt and adjustment bolt. Release the spring by using the crowbar to remove tension off the adjustment bolt, remove bolt and slowly release spring tension with crowbar. Remember how spring in oriented for reinstall and remove spring bolt, spring and bracket. There was a little fresh looking oil on/around back of the spring bolt, so I put some teflon tape on the bolt threads. Couldn’t tell if bolt originally had sealer on the threads and didn’t check for a blind hole; should have. Reinstalled in reverse order.

Installed new timing belt in place under crank cog.
Put crank hub housing back on and torqued to 120 ft-lb (Haynes manual reads 103 to 133). Made sure of TDC at #1 piston via spark plug hole. Used a ratchet on cam bolt turned clockwise only; cam sprang around on me! I should have used a short breaker bar or wrench with two hands to control movement better. Positioned cam pulley for correct alignment dead center on the cam marks. Completed Installing belt and tensioned, left tensioner bolts slightly loose. Installed crank belt pulley onto hub and timing cover minus the cam mark cover plug. Removed rest of pass side spark plugs and turned crank with wrench on crank bolt four complete revs clockwise. Cam/crank marks stayed aligned correctly, belt in place and tension looks OK. Replaced and wired plugs, removed timing cover and tightened tensioner bolts. The good book says “use a wrench on tensioner assembly to set belt tension, not the tensioner spring” which makes no sense to me, nor did I see anyplace to put the average wrench; they must mean the “special tool” used to relieve tension.

Secured engine bay and put AC coil loosely back in place, put battery terminals back on. Got in truck and started; she runs! Just for a few seconds, shut down and repeated, no problems. Well, almost. There is a loud ticking, sounds like in the top end, a single tick like a valve might make, not the whole valve train. I had checked oil level and was showing a little overfull, so I know ever livin’ drop of oil is in the bottom, it’s cold out here, and not too worried yet.
Put the engine exterior parts back on. AC coil, radiator, coolant, fan cowl and fan, belts, air box snorkel, etc., all the things that were disconnected in the course of tuneup and repair.

Started truck, and it started right up. Ran good, but still the ticking. It didn’t get any worse so I just let it run at idle. As the engine warned the ticking rapidly lost volume. After a little while it’s almost gone. I can still hear a little tick, but revving the engine to 2k and slowly back to idle, it doesn’t change volume and no new ticks or noises. Engine idle is smooth.

After engine idles maybe 25 minutes I shut down and installed my timing light. I removed the jumper plug on the connector located in wiring harness above DIS location. Restart was smooth, no changes. Warned engine and checked timing. Timing is close to 10 BTC, but a little retarded. I dial the timing light advance to 13 and the crank mark is lined up with TC on cover scale. SO about 13 BTC is what I’ve got at about 710 rpm according to my rpm meter (keys off the #1 plug wire), while in the truck the rpm shows just slightly over 500 rpm. (I did all this on both #1 plugs; results were the same). Oh, checked timing after reinstalling plug at DIS, and timing at idle ranging around 20 to 25 BTC; this just a “shucks and giggles” check.

You know, I scanned both the Haynes and Ford shop engine manual, and cannot find a call-out for timing. It seems that in forum research I saw that timing is 10 BTC +/- 2, but I’m not sure. Whoops! Forgot to read instructions on any vac line removing and plugging; will have to review the forum info.

Still don’t know what caused the timing jump, but noticed the new belt is tighter than the old one, of course. The old belt was missing no teeth, and had been on nearly 70k miles. When this all started, it was well below freezing. I did find a fair amount of misc dirt near the crank pulley. A piece of frozen crap caught between belt and cog pulley? Something momentarily stuck in the top end? Just a loose timing belt?
The tick bothered me. Early Sunday morning, I’m up and out to the truck. I start her up; she fires fine, with no loud tick. So maybe it was just lack of oil.

To me, the most FUBAR crap in the whole affair (other than the silly 8 plug head) is getting around the crank sensor to deal with the timing belt. It sucks. This is what led me to be creative in belt installation, and I may have caused top end damage in the process. It would probably be advantageous to install a new sensor with the belt, but the things are like around US$130. Who wants to spend that, if you don’t have to? Also, does the “timing sensor positioner tool, T86P-6316-A, or equivalent” come with a new sensor, or separately? The best scenario would probably be to have access to this tool and follow the factory shop procedure. This still leaves out the special tensioner tool, but it seems you can get good results without it.

Thanks to all for all the help!

 

Hey golley,
Glad to hear that your beast is running again.

 

Road tested fine today, and did an oil change.

Moving on to brake work tomorrow!

And again, thanks for the help.

Oh, for anyone interested, etoolcart.com has the Ford Crankshaft Positioner Gauge 303-354 (T86P-6316-A). In researching the forums, someone said the gauge comes with a new sensor.

 

I had to do the same trick to get my crank hub off....torque wrench against the frame and use the starter. I just wanted to add that I cut my timing cover in half on my '92 Ranger, and this made it MUCH easier to get off. Still snapped back on.