My 1987 Mercury Colony Park

[DerekTheGreat]

I'm with ya there. But when I reeeeeeeefed on mine it t'was the night before road trip and Derek was fretting about not having chariot ready in time.. Still no leaks or cracks but I've got HO stuff ready to go should that happen. Need to send you my spacer to have it bored

[Tanner02480]

Hi, I'm new here, this is this thread made me to make my registration on this forum ! I just read the 16 pages here, I really like your car and the upgrades you made on it !

I hope you will find a solution for your rear Tail gate , and I will have questions to ask you about what you did on you CP ^^

Best regards,

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Hi, I'm new here, this is this thread made me to make my registration on this forum ! I just read the 16 pages here, I really like your car and the upgrades you made on it !

I hope you will find a solution for your rear Tail gate , and I will have questions to ask you about what you did on you CP ^^

Best regards,

Thanks. It's been a learning experience with this thing. Regarding the tailgate, I have a donor one, but just haven't had the time/desire to want to toss it on and get it aligned. I've quit setting "should be done by dates" for this thing, because there's always something.


Worked some more on cleaning up the heads. More scraping with a razor getting all the old intake gasket stuff off. Coolant passage ports look good, no pitting to speak of. I'm trying to get those areas nice and clean for a solid seal once things go together. I also cleaned the block side. Nothing really bad there, all the coolant ports were clean and showed no signs of pitting or deterioration. Next up will be getting all the exhaust manifold gasket material off.

I also got my tap for the air ports on the back of the heads. Once side was more clogged with carbon than the other, which was also a present condition with the EGR passages.





Those ports are reasonably cleaned out so they'll accept the bolts that need to go in.


Also, on the odd flip side, one of my customers at work might want the E6 cylinder heads once I get them off. I told him there will be a burnt valve, but he said he'd have it fixed and would toss them on a 60s or 70s 302 being used in a truck. At least those won't just hit a dumpster like I was planning on.

[Tanner02480]

I'm not sure to understand, did you removed the cylinders heads ? are you working on an HO conversion or just an intake upgrade?
Regards

[Kodachrome Wolf]

I'm not sure to understand, did you removed the cylinders heads ? are you working on an HO conversion or just an intake upgrade?
Regards

The cylinder heads will be coming off the car in the near future. The current project is a semi-HO conversion. It will use HO upper intake, throttle body, and cylinder heads. If this was a full HO swap, it would also get a camshaft swap, different fuel injectors, different ECU, and a HO transmission govenor.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Day 1: Stripped some stuff off the engine





Since TecNickal has had some stuff off before, most of the bolts have been butter. The two hoses going to the water pump are being replaced as they're starting to look questionable. Throttle body linkage got swapped around, so the HO upper intake is ready.

Wonder why Ford added the threaded ports on the HO intakes for the PCV but left that off the LoPo intakes?

Anyway, tomorrow we're going to yank the upper intake, and hopefully the heads. Should be fun. Maybe we can also get most of it put back together with no extra bits!

[DerekTheGreat]

Dude.. There is no better time to throw that HO or explorer stick in...

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Dude.. There is no better time to throw that HO or explorer stick in...

If I had one available, that would have been on the table, however that wasn't the case. At least the supporting stuff will be in place should that ever happen.

Day 2: Took more stuff off, put some stuff back on, and I didn't photograph the latter.



So the cut wire and bungled up looking one seem to run into the harness for the O2 sensors. When the passenger side head came off, we didn't realize there was that wire on the back, and hovering the stupid head in place wasn't happening long, so we just snipped it. The bungled up looking one appears someone already messed with something for that to exist the way it did. It was attached to the stud for the heater pipe. If those are grounds, they'll just get combined on a single ring terminal and get grounded appropriately.


Also, the pièce de résistance, the whole reason we're here:


That ain't a burnt valve, it managed to suck it in. No compression, no combustion, dead cylinder.


Anyway, we did get started putting the engine back together. E7 heads installed with FelPro 9333PT gaskets torqued to spec. All push rods and rocker arms reinstalled and torqued. Exhaust manifolds bolted back on. Unfortunately we got rained out as we were planning on doing the lower intake manifold. Rain + Immediate Sun = Hellish Humidity.

Sunday evening we're going to pick up doing the work since I've got to do some work on my aunt's car on Saturday.

All that's really left is:
-Install lower intake manifold
-Install valve covers
-Install upper intake manifold
-Install distributor + wires
-Reattach all front accessories
-Reattach fan and shroud
-Get all fluids checked out

Sounds like a lot, but it's mostly just tossing bolts back into place. Maybe Sunday we can finally take it out for a rip if we get everything done.

[87gtVIC]

Is that some factory sticker/note on the transmission when viewed from above?


Yes. These do just kinda toss themselves back together. Pretty basic and straightforward to get it up and running again from this point on.

Oh and how does a valved get sucked into the head past its seat?

[gadget73]

how the f did the valve end up on the other side of the seat?

[Tanner02480]

how the f did the valve end up on the other side of the seat?

Ha ha ha this is a good question ! is somthing is broken on the top of the head ? rocker arm or something like that ?

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Is that some factory sticker/note on the transmission when viewed from above?

Looks just to be some writing from the transmission shop. AFAIK, Nick had the transmission rebuilt around 307K when it stopped going forwards. Just seems to have some date and whoever was doing the work.

Oh and how does a valved get sucked into the head past its seat?

how the f did the valve end up on the other side of the seat?

Magic?

I figure it may have something to do with how hard it was being driven at the time things stopped working right, yet I'm sure police 302s experienced more thrashing in their life, so I haven't a clue. Push rods were straight on cylinder 1, and the valve spring action appeared normal. Nothing seemed out of place on the top. The guy who wants these to tear down might be able to give a post mortem of what's happening inside, but I'm not tearing into them.

[Tiggie]

I wonder if they reused the original valves when the engine was rebuilt (IIRC it was rebuilt before?)?

[gadget73]

You might want to pull those lifters and inspect them and cam lobes for damage just in case.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

You might want to pull those lifters and inspect them and cam lobes for damage just in case.

That can be done. Only the heads are mounted right now, so we still have access. I know several months ago I popped off the valve cover and checked the action of everything up top, everything moved freely and appeared to be normal, but clearly appearances haven’t meant a thing at this point.

I wonder if they reused the original valves when the engine was rebuilt (IIRC it was rebuilt before?)?

Makes you wonder. The old heads were showing signs of corrosion/seepage around the front freeze plugs. There were Dorman replacements on the backs. Since it is believed to have gotten a remanned engine at 284K (or around that), it had to have been short block with rotating assembly only, meaning there were a lot of old, high mileage components reused. Cross hatching looks good, nothing freaky going on with the pistons, save for some carbon build up on cylinder 1 from being sprayed with gas and such but never firing.