Hi everyone, I spend most of my time on the SD forum, but I have a 95 f150 auto 4x4 that I have to get on the road. I'll try to be brief with the details.
Before I knew about FTE, my mother-in law passed away and we inherited her truck, which wasn't running. I was told that the tranny went out. One of her son's had pulled it out and it had sat for some time in the rain. Its a nice truck throughout so I figured that was the only problem. I junkyarded a tranny, which had a recent rebuild tag on it. Put it in the truck. went to bolt up the torqconverter.

Got the first two bolts in rotated the engine for the third, it would not turn far enough to access the bolt. went the other direction, same thing.
I was baffled but good.

I pulled the distributor, pulled the valve covers, pulled the oil pan, timeing chain cover. Could find nothing that should bind the engine. But when I tried to turn the engine over I sware I would have borken something if I put any more force on it.

I finally pulled the engine, and took a head off. Each cyclinder was complety plugged with carbon, in the combustion area of the head. So I figured that when piston that was near the tdc just couldn't get past tdc.

Sure enough, put the wrench on the crank bolt, and the engine turned 360 degrees, no problem.


Has any one heard of this before? Dose it mean that for some reason the computer was in fail safe mode that the engine should run so rich? I figure they were trying to get every last mile out of the truck with the tranny slipping, so maybe a code(s) were set that put the truck in fail safe or what ever its called. These are my first two questions.

Secondly, with the engine on the stand, not having worked on a ford motor in a long time, I thought the dog bone looking things between lifters were keepers, so I turned the engine over to look at the crank. Before I knew what had happened three lifters were on the floor, and I have no idea which hole they came out of. This is a roller lifter engine.

How critical is if I intall these 3 lifters and they end up in different holes than original. I want to do the engine right, but I don't want to spend any more than I have to.

Thanks in advance for any opinions / advice.

 

May of had a bad O2 sensor, plugged cat converter.

But at the same time, unless you get the trans and engine mated up correctly, the trans will bind and you wont be able to spin it.

 

The carbon buildup isn't uncommon, I encountered the same problem on the 5.0 I put back in service last summer, lots of carbon in 2 cylinders that actually prevented the motor spinning 360 degrees. This motor had sat for a few years too so maybe the carbon swells up over time.

The dogbones are designed to keep the roller lifters from spinning in the bores, and there should also be a spider bolted in the lifter valley to keep the dogbones in place(see pic), do you have this or is it missing? The lifters can go in any bore they don't have to be matched like a flat tappet setup.

 

Hi Blue Rebel and Conanski,
Thanks for the repies. Blue Rebel I'm not a trained mechanic but I have swapped several engines, and I'm sure that the tq was properly installed on the tranny if thats what you mean. Ofcourse I could have missed something. I do figure that I'll have to check all the emissions parts as something sure caused the thing to carbon up like it did.

Conanski I thought the lifters should be ok but wasn't sure, this is a relief. I do have the spider, can't remember why I had removed it. Also the truck had sat for some time before I got it so the carbon was kind of crusty or I don't know how to describe it just that I had never seen any thing like it.

Too bad because had I known I think I could have loosend it with a screw driver through the plug hole or something like that and got it turning, then cleaned it up with sea foam or a like product after the truck was running. Oh well live and learn.

Thanks again, as I go along I may ask more questions, Later

 

By the way Conanski thats a nice looking engine, is it a 5.0 or your 351, sorry I can't tell.
I'm not near mine right now to compare, but I'm thinking 351. What have you done to it?

 

No that's the 5.0 I put in the truck last year while I build the 5.8. All the details are in my signature line.. this motor had a stock flat tappet cam and I swapped an XE264HR roller into it using the roller assembly from a junkyard motor(lifters, spider and dogbones). It works pretty good for a 5.0.

 

Compression ratio I'm sure was increased due to buildup and if you didn't pull the plugs to relieve compression you probably couldn't turn by crank and socket. That's why it turned over when you took the head off...you released the compression off half the motor.

 

No.. in my case it wouldn't even turn over with all the plugs out, there was a large carbon buildup in the squish area and the piston couldn't reach TDC. I know my motor was running fine when removed so somehow the deposit had swelled in size while the motor was stored.

 

I was talking more to his post than yours Paul. His may have turned depending on whether the plugs were in or not. You may be right though...I guess that carbon could seize it up....dunno.

 

Yes I did pull all the plugs while the motor was still in the truck and still could not turn it over with a 1/2 inch breaker bar. I'm not sure which cylinder(s) were the hang up point, but I've never seen anything like what this engine looked like. When I get home next week I can post the pictures I took after pulling the heads. I'm not trying to argue just wondered if anyone had similar experience.