honeybadger
Just don't care
- Thread starter
- #1
Hi all!
The time has come to tear down the race motor. For the lucky few who didn't read through the 35+ pages of the original thread, last winter I opened up my original motor to find out that I had some valve springs chip and send pieces of metal through the oil pump. After much discussion and lost sleep, I decided to build the motor for race use.
The heads went to Rich at RGR for port/polish and valvetrain upgrades while the Shortblock went to the wizard called Tim at MPR Racing Engines. The motor was assembled to race specifications with many beefed up parts to minimize rotating mass, friction, and handle high heat. As such, the life of an engine like that is ~40 hours (per Ford's service recommendations).
We're at 42.5 hours on the clock of heavy race-environment use, so time to tear into it and see how things are looking and what needs to be freshed. I'll for sure be putting in fresh timing chains, guides, tensioners and valve seals (it's burning some oil on startup). Other than that, hopefully it'll be in good shape and we won't need to worry.
UPDATE: Added teardown video. Keep reading on if you prefer pics.
So valve covers off - the cams look like they did when I put it back together. No new wear that I'm able to see on the lobes.
Front engine cover off. Nothing out of the ordinary at first sight. Chains look good. Tensioners are holding tight, etc.
Cam phasers look great
Chains off. The ends of the cams look good. This bottom black bracket/guide of the secondary tensioner has been a worry for me. Replacing with the upgraded GT4-spec guide upon reassembly
.
Secondary chain tensioner showing some wear. Definitely time for replacement
MMR Guides showing some indentation from the billet tensioners push on the guides
. Looks like I'm going to pass on these. Don't need these bits of AL floating around in the oil
The guides are showing some extraneous wear on the ends. Evidence of some play in the chains.
Pulled off the oil pan to find that my FP350S Oil pickup tube had a broken mount. That's not good. That was a ticking time bomb. Mount half was freely spinning - pickup tube only held in by 1 bolt. Seal to pump was ripping. Ooof. Going to have to reach out to Watson/Ford Performance about this one. This easily could have been a $15,000 accident.
On the bright side, I popped the main caps. Bearings looked good. Will measure later this week
Popped a couple of rod caps. Bearings look great here too.
Opened the oil pump and looks pretty normal from other pumps I've seen. Finger nail doesn't catch
The time has come to tear down the race motor. For the lucky few who didn't read through the 35+ pages of the original thread, last winter I opened up my original motor to find out that I had some valve springs chip and send pieces of metal through the oil pump. After much discussion and lost sleep, I decided to build the motor for race use.
The heads went to Rich at RGR for port/polish and valvetrain upgrades while the Shortblock went to the wizard called Tim at MPR Racing Engines. The motor was assembled to race specifications with many beefed up parts to minimize rotating mass, friction, and handle high heat. As such, the life of an engine like that is ~40 hours (per Ford's service recommendations).
We're at 42.5 hours on the clock of heavy race-environment use, so time to tear into it and see how things are looking and what needs to be freshed. I'll for sure be putting in fresh timing chains, guides, tensioners and valve seals (it's burning some oil on startup). Other than that, hopefully it'll be in good shape and we won't need to worry.
UPDATE: Added teardown video. Keep reading on if you prefer pics.
So valve covers off - the cams look like they did when I put it back together. No new wear that I'm able to see on the lobes.
Front engine cover off. Nothing out of the ordinary at first sight. Chains look good. Tensioners are holding tight, etc.
Cam phasers look great
Chains off. The ends of the cams look good. This bottom black bracket/guide of the secondary tensioner has been a worry for me. Replacing with the upgraded GT4-spec guide upon reassembly
.
Secondary chain tensioner showing some wear. Definitely time for replacement
MMR Guides showing some indentation from the billet tensioners push on the guides
. Looks like I'm going to pass on these. Don't need these bits of AL floating around in the oil
The guides are showing some extraneous wear on the ends. Evidence of some play in the chains.
Pulled off the oil pan to find that my FP350S Oil pickup tube had a broken mount. That's not good. That was a ticking time bomb. Mount half was freely spinning - pickup tube only held in by 1 bolt. Seal to pump was ripping. Ooof. Going to have to reach out to Watson/Ford Performance about this one. This easily could have been a $15,000 accident.
On the bright side, I popped the main caps. Bearings looked good. Will measure later this week
Popped a couple of rod caps. Bearings look great here too.
Opened the oil pump and looks pretty normal from other pumps I've seen. Finger nail doesn't catch
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