'75 W300 repair/mod project - Ol' Blue

I present to you... "Bananaflage". :p


What'd you expect for $75? :D The sad part is these are still better than what's on the truck now.
 
cant tell entirely but they dont look all that bad to me...deffinatly not rusty and dont look to have much mud on em
 
Compared to what's on the truck now, they're a little better, but that's about as far as it goes.

Blue's pass side fender is smashed in above the side marker light up to the bend at the top of the fender. The BF pass fender has primer in that same place because there's some mud there. It's for the same reason, but the dent doesn't appear to be anywhere near as bad looking at it from the inside.

The driver side fender on Blue is in better overall shape, so I just got it as a spare. I only wanted the $5 side marker light off of the BF driver fender, but for $15 more I just picked up the whole thing.

The BF hood is pretty straight and relatively rust free. The only damage on it I've found so far is a 4" dent a little bit behind the leading edge on the pass side. Blue's hood has apparently been in a substantial accident sometime in it's past. The leading edge has been literally hammered out and pulled straight with pliers of some kind. The bracing on the underside of the hood is completely separated from the top skin and there are tears or cracks in the bracing as well.

Why? Because farm truck.:rolleyes:
 
More cleaning and painting today. The sump on the oil pan was pushed up towards the oil pickup screen just enough to rub two semi-circular marks in the bottom of the sump. It was just barely touching, so the dent wasn't bad enough to damage the oil pickup. The timing cover was in decent shape by comparison. The bolt rails also got flattened back out where the bolts had distorted the sealing surfaces. Then I cleaned them up, sand blasted and sprayed them gunmetal grey. I also cleaned and sandblasted the harmonic damper. When I went to paint it I saw that it has a seal surface sleeve repair on it. The rubbery tape I wrapped around the seal surface didn't hold so some of the blast media got to the sleeve. Long story short, I need a new sleeve. For now I just painted it satin black so it won't rust before I can repair it.


I'll edit this post with the description for this pic later tonight. Gotta go to dinner right now.


EDIT: When I pulled the oil pan, the first thing I noticed was that the crank is indeed a forged piece. The next thing I spotted was that rods were stamped with cylinder numbers on the cap parting lines. However, ALL of them were placed in the wrong cylinders.:doh: At this point, I'm not even surprised by stuff like this anymore. The pistons all looked fine with just some minor scuffing on the skirts. The rod bearings had some hard particle dings from whatever was in the oil, but not in bad shape otherwise. The rod journals on the crank all looked to be in good shape as well. The oil holes on the rod journals weren't chamfered by the machine shop that did the work, but they will be before I put this engine back together. All of the rod oil squirters were pointed in the right direction, so it appears that the piston in cylinder #8 was upside down on a right side up rod.

Next step will be to pull the timing set, crank and cam and then mic all the journals to make sure everything is still within tolerance.
 
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#8 piston was the one that was upside down in the bore. The rod was right side up though (thankfully) so no damage done to the crank. ALL the rods were in the wrong cylinders according to the numbers stamped at the cap parting lines. Me thinks a weeee bit of adult beverages were probably consumed before, and during, the last reassembly of this engine.:fallendowndrunk:
 
Methinks that someone THOUGHT he knew how to assemble an engine. :doh:
 
I took a closer look at the numbers stamped in the rods and figured out what they did wrong. Well, besides picking up a wrench in the first place that is. :rolleyes: Apparently the previous engine assembler didn't know that the front cylinder on the driver side is #1. They also didn't seem to know that the driver side has all the odd numbered cylinders and the pass side has the even ones. They did however at least try to make a guess of some kind as to where each piston and rod assembly went. They put #1 in the #2 cylinder and then just went straight back in that bank with #2-4 in order. On the drivers side they started up with #5 and filled that side of the engine, also in order, with the rest of them.

It looked like this:

Front
DRV - PAS
5 - 1
6 - 2
7 - 3
8 - 4

When it's supposed to be like this:

Front
DRV - PAS
1 - 2
3 - 4
5 - 6
7 - 8
 
I've never cracked a Ford open before. Is that really how they sequence their cylinder numbers?:hmmm:
 
Yes, sir. #1 is the right-hand (passenger's) front, numbered straight back then rolling over to the driver's side. One is five, two is one, and everything you believe is a lie. :D
 
I got all the rods and pistons cleaned up this evening and everything looks fairly decent so far with one exception. The piston on rod #7 is a little sticky on the wrist pin. I'll have to pull that one apart and hone it for the proper sliding fit on the wrist pin. Even with that one minor issue, it looks like I can pretty much reuse everything there.
 
Dr.Jass said:
Assembled by a Ford guy.
Click to expand...

Damn.. Jass beat me to it. Yup, my FE boat anchors were numbered that way. Right on the 90 lb cast intake that the pushrods run through. Whadda terd. Though I think they have the same numbered firing order as normal people? I may be wrong.
 
I guess I'm lucky I never did have a reason to rebuild any of the few Fords I've owned. That wasn't due to them not breaking or just being turds in general, but rather I just never cared enough about any of them to bother.
*hum's Adam Sandler's "Piece of shit car" song in my head"*

That might have to change sooner rather than later though. My DD, a '94 Mazda B4000 (4.0 OHV) rebadged Deranger, decided to crap it's pants this weekend and then wallow around in it's own filth under the hood. I was so disgusted with it I haven't even popped the hood yet. It was bad enough to have a LOT of goo oozing around the leg elastic kind of bad though.:doh:Who knows, it may be cheaper to look into a 5.0 swap instead of messing with this dinosaur engine. The newer OHC 4.0's make almost double the HP of the pushrod type engine I have, but I like the parts availability options for the 5.0L.
 
gomopar440 said:
The piston on rod #7 is a little sticky on the wrist pin. I'll have to pull that one apart and hone it for the proper sliding fit on the wrist pin.
Click to expand...
Do you have the equipment for pressing piston pins? If not, I'd suggest soaking it in Marvel Mystery Oil for a few days, working it back and forth repeatedly a few times to see if it frees.

440s were all press-fit pistons, so unless you've got the right equipment, I would definitely advise against any attempt to remove that piston from the rod.
 
I have a HF 20 ton floor mounted H-type hydraulic press, but I'm hesitant to use it as this job would probably require a bit more finesse that I can get from it. I was thinking about farming it out to an actual engine shop at this point. I'm open to any other options/ideas you may have though. I'll try the MM oil trick until then.
 
Farm it out to a machine shop. You'll very likely destroy the piston trying to remove the pin, but if you don't, you absolutely will trying to install a press-fit pin using a press. "Press fit" is jargon for what's correctly known as an interference fit; piston pins are never actually pressed.
 
Stay away from that SOHC 4.0.. it's just a fifty year old cologne v6 block with the scabbiest of bandaids stuck to it to limp it into this millennium. Find a timing chain diagram for it. Have a good chuckle while you picture yourself pulling the motor to replace the plastic timing chain guides and a valve or two on the passenger side head. There was almost a class action suit over it.
 
I've already pretty much settled on having a shop deal with the #7 wrist pin fitment issue. It's just going to have to wait until I can use the wife's Jeep to get to town 1/2 hr away. She'll be out of town tomorrow all day, so if I need to go anywhere, I'll either be hoofing it or taking the ATV. The nearest auto parts store is about 6 miles away, so take a guess which one I'll be choosing if I need it...[smilie=i:

While the power increase of the SOHC engine over the OHV engine is tempting, I hadn't even considered it for that very reason (dual timing setup). I asked today at the local JY I usually go to and a complete OHV 4.0, SOHC 4.0 or cookie cutter 5.0 are all going to run between $350-400. The 4.0 feels anemic at this altitude (5K ASL)and I'm sure the SOHC would do better, for the same money with the 5.0 I could have more HP/TQ and parts are usually cheaper and also available just about anywhere. I'd be nice to not have to mail order all the parts I need for a change. Of course after the 5.0 swap the next weakest link would be the Dana 35 TTB front axle. I'm sure it's days would be numbered after trying to cope with a V8. A solid axle swap would solve that problem when, not if, it arises.
 
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