I decided not to paint the new engine. The shiny paint I put on the last one took a lot of time and effort, and certainly didn’t help it run any better. This one was pretty clean, just 270,000 miles of minor oil leaks and road grime on it. So I cleaned it up, did a complete reseal (except the head gasket), put in some new freeze plugs, and put it in the truck.
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I bought a Fumoto oil drain valve. I’ve wanted one for all my past vehicles, and decided to finally get one. I cross drilled it so that the holes in the oil pan drain line up, so I can get that last pint or so out. As you can see, its conceivably possible to rip it off, but the axle protects it pretty well.
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I bought a fancy new Valair clutch. It’s a 13” organic, good for 350 hp / 700 ft*lb. They put it together for me with the flywheel machined out and a Ford pilot bearing installed, and a Ford throwout bearing. I figured I would just spend the money and have something that works the first time instead of trying to piece something together and saving some money. Well that didn’t exactly work out so well.
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Went to install it, wouldn’t install all the way. After pulling it and installing it about 6 times, I figured out that it was the input shaft hitting the pilot bearing. I could have had the flywheel machined 0.130” deeper for the pilot bearing, or make a spacer. I decided to make a spacer. I thought about drawing it up in SolidWorks and having a shop just cut it out of ¼” plate, but decided to do it the hard way with some 2” and 3” ¼” steel, and my new welder. That was a miserable experience. I ended up shocking myself with my welder (long story), and using up a lot of grinding discs, flap wheels, bending a 5/8” drill bit, finished up the holes by melting them with my welder, and making a horrible mess. But I ended up with a spacer, ¼” thick, with all the holes lined up, not warped, and for $40. So I rented a transmission jack for the 4th time and in it went, and the ¼” didn’t mess up my driveshafts.
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The last little irritating hurdle was I needed the wastegate arm to be 90 degrees for the setup I have, the stock wastegate would hit my AC evaporator. I wanted to cut it and weld it myself. I’m not a welder, just a guy with a welder in his hand, so I was worried about goofing it up on the 0.100” metal. I did a lot of practicing, and was finally ready. As I was setting it up, I realized that a magnet wouldn’t stick to the piece I was going to weld… stainless! So I bought some fancy rod and did some more practicing, and got a nice weld. I had to grind it down a bit for clearance, but its solid.
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I got it all back together and it fired right up. Didn’t fill my garage with smoke like the last one. Adjust the idle up a bit, and went for a drive. I’ve been daily driving it for the last few weeks, and have put almost 1000 miles on it. I had a minor issue with a power steering leak, and I’ve got a small but irritating oil leak – pretty sure it’s the oil pan gasket.
I had to do some modifications to my clutch master cylinder pushrod, repairing some more previous owner idiocy, but now it works well and engages where I want it to. My fuel gauges don’t work, which is irritating, but I’ll be pulling the flatbed off to mount it properly so I’ll deal with them then. So far I’ve been getting 17-18 mpg which I’m very happy with.
I’m not running a fan. The mechanical fan only has about ¾” clearance, which seems to work fine. I am debating on running electrics though. Without a fan I have no problems at all. It’s gotten a little warm while going real slow off road, but at 25 mph or faster it stays right at 175-185 F.
Last night I put new Bilstein front shocks on it. The old ones were Fox remote reservoir shocks, which I don’t think were right for the truck. They didn’t feel like they were doing anything. It feels a lot better now with the new ones.