Hamfisted
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Guests in town for Thanksgiving and looking for something to do. So we ripped into the Expy for a quick timing chain and oil pump replacement job. The Expy has 211k miles on the clock, and always been fed Mobil One 10w-30 oil, with regular changes at 7000 miles and used only Motorcraft filters. Its the older 2V motor, so the strain on the chains is a little less than the 3V motors. Started to develop a cold start chain chatter about 10k miles ago, but nothing bad. Just a little chain slap for the first few seconds until oil pressure built up. After disassembly we saw no blown out tensioners or busted guides. Only a little slack in the two chains due to wear. The tensioner guides showed only about 1/16 track wear from the chains right where the hydraulic tensioners push from behind. Otherwise they were fine.
There is about 4 hours of tear-down just to get to the chains. We didn't remove the heater hoses and coolant, just the passenger side fenderwell liner and tire to get to the lower valve cover bolts on the passenger side. In retrospect it would've been easier to drain the coolant and remove the heater hoses. We used Fel Pro gaskets on reassembly. That DAP super glue from HD works very well to keep the valve cover gaskets in place for reassembly. Otherwise those gaskets like to fall out of their grooves and out of place. Didn't want any oil leaks afterwards. The flex head ratchets/wrenches and electric impact drivers were life savers too. We did this job just for piece of mind. Not experiencing any engine performance issues or noises other than the cold start chain chatter. Probably could've gone at least another 50k miles on these parts without issue.
Plastic hydraulic tensioners .... ugh .... weak spring inside. You can compress 'em by hand... but at least the seals weren't blown out yet ....
Overall the job really took a full day. We took several breaks just to keep from throwing things. The installation of the chains is very straight forward, as the chains are color marked to make timing easy. For the oil pump installation we didn't remove the oil pan, but if I was doing it by myself I would have on this 2wd Expy. A 4wd I would probably not. But getting the bolts back into the oil pickup line / to pump was a huge PITA, I don't care what FordTech says.
After re-assembly was complete we left the crank sensor unplugged and cranked the engine until oil pressure showed up on the gauges then plugged the sensor back in and she fired right up. Accidentally left #4 fuel injector unplugged, but once we sorted that out she purrs like brand new again.
There is about 4 hours of tear-down just to get to the chains. We didn't remove the heater hoses and coolant, just the passenger side fenderwell liner and tire to get to the lower valve cover bolts on the passenger side. In retrospect it would've been easier to drain the coolant and remove the heater hoses. We used Fel Pro gaskets on reassembly. That DAP super glue from HD works very well to keep the valve cover gaskets in place for reassembly. Otherwise those gaskets like to fall out of their grooves and out of place. Didn't want any oil leaks afterwards. The flex head ratchets/wrenches and electric impact drivers were life savers too. We did this job just for piece of mind. Not experiencing any engine performance issues or noises other than the cold start chain chatter. Probably could've gone at least another 50k miles on these parts without issue.
Plastic hydraulic tensioners .... ugh .... weak spring inside. You can compress 'em by hand... but at least the seals weren't blown out yet ....
Overall the job really took a full day. We took several breaks just to keep from throwing things. The installation of the chains is very straight forward, as the chains are color marked to make timing easy. For the oil pump installation we didn't remove the oil pan, but if I was doing it by myself I would have on this 2wd Expy. A 4wd I would probably not. But getting the bolts back into the oil pickup line / to pump was a huge PITA, I don't care what FordTech says.
After re-assembly was complete we left the crank sensor unplugged and cranked the engine until oil pressure showed up on the gauges then plugged the sensor back in and she fired right up. Accidentally left #4 fuel injector unplugged, but once we sorted that out she purrs like brand new again.
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