The mechanic who replaced mine this summer pulled the bumper and the grill off to take the engine out. He said it comes out easiest that way. Hope this helps.

 

You are correct you can lift the engine out by its self, but putting it back in is a tough job with the transmission in the truck. Its actually a little easier to remove the tramsmission and engine and a heck of a lot easier to reinstall with the transmission attached to the engine. This way the tailshaft of the transmission keeps the engine at a vertical angle and you can use it as a guide to move the engine into position.
The big problem is the 10-25 minutes you have the engine and transmission and about 1050 pounds "hanging in the air" it is dangerious to say the least, but on the other hand what about a 3500 pound body hanging. I'm telling you an Excursion body off the chassies looks a lot like a School Bus.

 

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Yeah - I agree with you on the service manager issue.

To make it even worse, my experience is that MANY service managers ( not all, but many) arent mechanics themselves, just "service writers", and thus arent really all that helpful when discussing foul-ups.

As a side note, I did have to go to my local Ford dealer (from whom, incidentally, I did NOT buy my near-new cream puff..!) for some warranty complaints. They have three or four service manager-writers at the service desk, and each one is a pretty well-informed mechanic personally. That is refreshing! I cant recommend Prescott Ford here in the high country of northern Arizona highly enough !

Yes, Ford dealers know how to bill - but it sure is nice to deal with INFORMED people you dont have to explain the birds & bees to !

 

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Silly question - everyone knows it is the big purple watchamacallit connected with that long orange therbus acutator to the fizzaglub...

 

I bought my Excursion running bit with a nasty rod knock. Modular engines are prone to rod bearing issues when the oil level gets low.

Back in my Mustang days, I used to run a full two extra quarts in the stock DOHC Cobra engine because when the engine was running there was about a quart of oil in each head leaving about 2.5 quarts in the pan. If you shut the engine off and immediately pulled the dipstick it didn't even show on the stick.

More to the discussion at hand, I have swapped a V10 in a 4x4 Excursion, and I'm pulling a 6.0L out the front of an F-350 next weekend. Drain everything. Pull the bumper, grill, headlights, and the radiator support. The A/C condensor has enough play that you can gently swing it up and out of the way. Unbolt the A/C compressor, Y-pipe, starter, torque converter, bellhousing, remove the fan, shroud, radiator hoses, and radiator. Up top, remove the air intake, throttle body and elbow, EGR if equipped, disconnect the fuel lines. Remove the engine harness, alternator, coil packs, and then the manifold with the injectors and fuel rails on it. Remove the nuts on the motor mounts, support the bellhousing with a floor jack, and attach an engine crane with the boom just above the valve covers, a cross bar with chains outside the valve covers works best and let's you remove and install the engine fairly level, but use what you know.

Make sure nothing is still connected and remove the engine. If you've done as many engine as me over the years it takes about 4-5 hours to remove, but don't feel bad if it takes you a full 10-12 hour day to get it out.

10,000 miles later my Excursion runs fantastic. You can definately do it.

 

Fan-freaking-tastic post. Thank you kindly. If I'd have known how badly my engine had previously been "repaired", I would have probably done a long block R&R from a junkyard. I put about 30 hours into replacing one head, the balance shaft on the other and some timing parts.

 

I remain confused. The info. I have may be incomplete. I was under the impression that there is nothing really new or marvelous about the Ford V-10 in our "gasser" Excursions - simply, for all practical purposes, a longer version of their V-8.

In any event, the info. I have suggests no significant difference in the reliability of Ford product motor "lower ends" over others, given all other things being equal - that presumes reasonable maintainence. I read somewhere this motor is used in a number of industrial ( meaning non-automotive) applications, and has a good reliability record. Bear in mind most industrial engines are run at "rated" power (pretty much wide open).

So - we are back to my initial question about this fellow's post about "bad rod bearings". I would VERY much like to have him review my initial questions, and tell us what we can learn from his experience.

If this is a simple case of abuse thru failure to maintain proper oil levels, that suggests other issues - these motors do not use oil to the point of running their oil pans below the pump's intake, absent something significantly wrong.

C'mon..guy..help us out - we are all here to learn.

 

6686L,
Your post on rod bearings is a very valid post. Rod bearing can be installed as you suggested. I actually enjoyed the post. One can mike the crank and install new rod bearings as you suggested. This would be for someone who has the ability that apparently you have. I done this many years ago in a 57 Chevy 6cyl I had. So in short I agree with you 100% on this one.

idahof350 posted about oil drain back. This can occur on the V-10 just as it occurs on the 426 Hemi and a big block 396,427 and 454 Chevy especially if after market valve covers are used. Remember these engines came from the factory with "not so tall" valve covers for a reason.
As you well know at high rpms sometimes the valve covers can half-fill with oil. In other words the oil is being pumped faster than the drain back. Under these adverse conditions the oil can and sometimes foam due to air being pumped from the bottom end. This can cause the lower end to starve its self of oil, hence the rod bearing "burn".
You Sir I would suggest are very advanced in engine building and understand a lot of things the average home mechanic does not.
So to sum it up I agree with the statements you have opinioned although the average home mechanic may or may not.
I agree that in order to repair a problem of this nature is to understand what caused the problem before the repair is implemented.

 

The clearances in our beloved V10s are in some cases 1/4 of what was commonly used 50 years ago. I just did a 4.0L V6 in a Mustang a couple months back, and even with "good" Clevite bearings, at 3,000 miles, the engine tossed a rod bearing because there wasn't enough crush on the bearing and in turn the clearances jumped from the stock .0007" to a whopping .0025". I have personally built over 400 engines, many of those "crate motors" that shipped far and wide. I have lost 7 rod bearings in 20 years of building engines.

What used to work doesn't always still work, and in the case of that 4.0L, an engine which even though it has overhead cams bears strong similarity to a 221-351 Windsor small block, .0025" clearance dropped the oil pressure at idle in half, and while it seemed acceptable at 18 psi, the oil didn't have the backing pressure to form a cushion for the bearing. The bearing in turn ran hot, lost it's shape and the rod could no longer hold it in the rod bore, so it spun.

 

This tells a little about the "modular" Ford engines. To my knowledge they are all quite similar and pretty much share the same failure modes.

Ford Modular engine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following site is a good place to find info in general about the 4.6, but I think you can also find a lot of good stuff on some mustang sites.

Modular High Performance - Crownvic.net

 

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Hope the fellow who had the rod bearing trouble can get us some answers to my questions.

 

I just reread this post and it makes a lot of sense to me. Would a person have to stamp those bearing caps like the cam bearing caps on disassembly?

This little tidbit of knowledge could be very useful when buying a rig with a blown motor.

 

wow -------------

 

Too bad the fellow who reported "bad rod bearings" could not or would not review my questions and help us with some info.

 

When my X was done a couple years ago the body was never lifted off.