HO/explorer swap questions, +rebuild kits?

[BerniniCaCO3]

Hi!

Alright, thought this would be in the distant future, but I now find myself registered for the engine rebuilding class ...which starts in 2 weeks!

I have a 1990 colony park wagon, with the stock 302 lopo engine. It runs well: good oil pressure, good compression, runs smooth, though just about every seal leaks some oil ;-)

Now, it's an 8week class so it only makes sense to rebuild a different core and then swap it out with my stock engine in a day.
Before I run off to the junk yard this weekend I have some questions.


--Can you clarify the gt40 versus gt40p question? Did all explorers come with the gt40p heads, or as someone claimed, did the 1996 explorers have the gt40s? Which do I want?
I was told that the exhaust manifold and spark plug locations are different on the 40p's. However, if I'm pulling the exhaust manifold too, will it mate up with the rest of my exhaust? I might not mind a newer explorer engine with the gt40p heads if it fits right in.

--MILEAGE. I'm going to a junkyard, probably. Crazy Ray's has any engine, you pull, for $200. How high is too high? And, if someone destroyed their engine by say, running it out of oil, will pulling just the valve covers tell me enough? I don't plan on pulling pistons until I've pulled the engine, paid for it, brought it to the school shop, and started taking it apart 2 weeks too late to discover that it's wrecked.

Furthermore, my budget is really pretty tight. $200 for the engine, $500 for rebuild parts, $200 more for miscellaneous (better alternator for example, while i'm at it; maybe dual exhaust if it can be done on the cheap: or just the unforeseen).
No room in the budget to take it to a machine shop to rebore the cylinders and regrind a crankshaft!
Should I be looking for 100,000 miles or less?

Mostly this project just scares me: never rebuilt an engine, never even pulled an engine at a junkyard before, and I don't have money to waste if I pull a bad engine!


How new can I go? I've heard '95-'01. Did '01 have a distributor still? If not, is that OK, even better, than the old distributor model: so long as I pull a matching ECU? Is there a newer model that has no fallible tv cable, and uses some other means to remotely connect with the trans, perhaps with a servo motor at the tranny instead of the solid cable that can fall off? Better fuel economy? How new can I go?


FINALLY: who makes a good rebuild kit, manufactured to excellent tolerances? Don't need to pay a steep premium to go that extra step for racing performance, but I don't want crap pistons either. I'm figuring on new pistons, a full rebuild kit, while I'm doing this.


thanks!!
-Bernard

Anyone live in MD and plan on junkyard picking in the next couple weeks, btw?

[BerniniCaCO3]

OK, also just learned about the E7TE head option. I seriously need some direction, and in the next few days!

[gadget73]

E7 heads are HO heads. They are nothing special. Go explorer parts if you're going to bother.

1996 and early 1997 have GT40 heads. mid 97 onward are GT40P heads. The P head has a modified combustion chamber, which makes the spark plug sit at a different angle from every other stock Ford head made. This translates to needing special headers to make it work, or some screwing about with modified plug sockets and special plug wires for things to fit. I would advise using the special headers, they really do work that well. You cannot and will not want to use the Explorer exhaust stuff. Not only would getting the pipes to it be a silly amount of work, those manifolds are just absolutely horrible. The tubes are very restrictive, and it passes 3 cylinders through one tube in a spot.

Mileage is far less important than condition. My Mark VII has well over 200k and that motor is in better condition than some I've seen with half that mileage. Generally you want the least mileage possible, but you have to use some common sense here too. A good condition engine will have no black sludge under the valve covers, no signs of milky oil, and no signs of physical damage to the oil pan which may mean it ran dry. General vehicle condition is usually useful too. If its a wrecked truck that you can tell was taken care of, you're probably going to get a better motor than an unwrecked truck that looks like someone just kicked it every day of it's life. Since you're knowledgeable enough to swap a motor, you'll be able to do a quick walk-around and make some guesses as to how a particular vehicle was treated.

Truth be told, I'd probably not rebuild it unless there were really strong signs that it needed it. Pop the heads and look at the cylinder walls. If you see crosshatches and no fat ring land at the top, the bores are likely fine and so are the rings. Give the pistons a wobble. If they move in all directions about equally and not excessively, run it. Pop a couple bearings if you want. You should not see deep scratches, large patches of copper, or other signs of wear or damage. If you want to spend some cash on the motor, have the heads rebuilt and just bolt the bottom end together with a fresh oil pump. Provided the motor hasn't been abused, chances are quite good that you'll be fine. If you want a fully rebuilt motor, you might actually end up breaking even just buying a remanufactured longblock thats ready to run and has a warranty. By the time you factor in buying a used motor, paying for the engine kit and machine shop work, and all of your time to pull it and re-assemble, its a little hard to justify when you're keeping it a basically stock 302.


No 5.0 Explorer has a distributor. There is a cam sensor in the hole where the dizzy lives, but thats it. Remove the sensor, drop in the stock distributor from your car. Done. ECU is not really useful to you unless you plan to do extensive rewiring. The generally accepted practice is to use Mark VII stuff, but some people have had trouble with that running too lean. Mustang mass air stuff works nicely though, or you can get adventurous and do an EEC V swap. There is no known documentation of that process on a box Panther though, so you're muchly on your own there. Would be cool tho.

Explorers used a fully electronic transmission. Not useful to you at all, unless you're either doing the ecu and wiring swap, or want to buy a standalone controller for a not terribly small amount of money. Short of that, you're gonna end up keeping the AOD and modifying the Explorer throttle body to hook it up to.

[gadget73]

E7 heads are HO heads. They are nothing special. Go explorer parts if you're going to bother.

1996 and early 1997 have GT40 heads. mid 97 onward are GT40P heads. The P head has a modified combustion chamber, which makes the spark plug sit at a different angle from every other stock Ford head made. This translates to needing special headers to make it work, or some screwing about with modified plug sockets and special plug wires for things to fit. I would advise using the special headers, they really do work that well. You cannot and will not want to use the Explorer exhaust stuff. Not only would getting the pipes to it be a silly amount of work, those manifolds are just absolutely horrible. The tubes are very restrictive, and it passes 3 cylinders through one tube in a spot.

Mileage is far less important than condition. My Mark VII has well over 200k and that motor is in better condition than some I've seen with half that mileage. Generally you want the least mileage possible, but you have to use some common sense here too. A good condition engine will have no black sludge under the valve covers, no signs of milky oil, and no signs of physical damage to the oil pan which may mean it ran dry. General vehicle condition is usually useful too. If its a wrecked truck that you can tell was taken care of, you're probably going to get a better motor than an unwrecked truck that looks like someone just kicked it every day of it's life. Since you're knowledgeable enough to swap a motor, you'll be able to do a quick walk-around and make some guesses as to how a particular vehicle was treated.

Truth be told, I'd probably not rebuild it unless there were really strong signs that it needed it. Pop the heads and look at the cylinder walls. If you see crosshatches and no fat ring land at the top, the bores are likely fine and so are the rings. Give the pistons a wobble. If they move in all directions about equally and not excessively, run it. Pop a couple bearings if you want. You should not see deep scratches, large patches of copper, or other signs of wear or damage. If you want to spend some cash on the motor, have the heads rebuilt and just bolt the bottom end together with a fresh oil pump. Provided the motor hasn't been abused, chances are quite good that you'll be fine. If you want a fully rebuilt motor, you might actually end up breaking even just buying a remanufactured longblock thats ready to run and has a warranty. By the time you factor in buying a used motor, paying for the engine kit and machine shop work, and all of your time to pull it and re-assemble, its a little hard to justify when you're keeping it a basically stock 302.


No 5.0 Explorer has a distributor. There is a cam sensor in the hole where the dizzy lives, but thats it. Remove the sensor, drop in the stock distributor from your car. Done. ECU is not really useful to you unless you plan to do extensive rewiring. The generally accepted practice is to use Mark VII stuff, but some people have had trouble with that running too lean. Mustang mass air stuff works nicely though, or you can get adventurous and do an EEC V swap. There is no known documentation of that process on a box Panther though, so you're muchly on your own there. Would be cool tho.

Explorers used a fully electronic transmission. Not useful to you at all, unless you're either doing the ecu and wiring swap, or want to buy a standalone controller for a not terribly small amount of money. Short of that, you're gonna end up keeping the AOD and modifying the Explorer throttle body to hook it up to.

[over2tonsofFun]

Would just the GT40 parts off of an 96 Explorer work on a 89 Town car? Heads, intake, Etc? I am thinking of getting some.

Tim

[sly]

yes. But to get the full affect, you'll need the cam as well. But if you plan any power adders (blower/turbo/etc) you'll need the forged bottom end that the explorer engine has.

[johnunit]

yep. GT40 heads are basically bolt-on (there is some debate about head bolt size, apparently some GT40 heads got the larger 1/2 size, but there is a washer kit to make those fit 302s which use 7/16 bolts) but it is easily doable and will net some pretty serious gains.

To give an idea, my Engine Analyzer (think super-detailed desktop dyno) model of my near-stock 351 engine shows 50+ hp increases from stock heads to GT40 heads.

[Mercracer]

yes. But to get the full affect, you'll need the cam as well. But if you plan any power adders (blower/turbo/etc) you'll need the forged bottom end that the explorer engine has.

Explorers have hypereutectic pistons.... CV/GM motors should have the same crank and rods as Explorer motors...

[sly]

doh... got my infos mixed again.

93 t-bird then? was that the one with the cobra cam and forged internals?

[gadget73]

should be yes. The Cobra cam thing is hearsay, I've never actually seen absolute proof that anyone has ID'd a factory cam in any sbf, but thats what the rumour says.

Forged internals are nice, but honestly unless you're spraying the BS out of it, they don't matter. I'd much rather have the superior GT40(p) heads and hyper pistons than forged pistons and E7 heads.

[sly]

point. If I ever really get to build a good engine though... it'll be a 351w or bigger (408...) with a twin turbo setup

[Mercracer]

should be yes. The Cobra cam thing is hearsay, I've never actually seen absolute proof that anyone has ID'd a factory cam in any sbf, but thats what the rumour says. .

Ford Master Parts Catalog lists it as OEM for the Thunderbird application.

This cam also was used in some late '93 5.0L Thunderbirds to "improve idle stability and reduce hydrocarbon emissions," according to Doug Anderson, vice president of Grooms Engines, a production engine rebuilder located in Nashville.

The consensus among Mustang guys is that you DO NOT want the Cobra cam. You are giving up horsepower over the standard HO cam. HO cam with 1.7 roller rockers is a far better bet. As was mentioned above, very few T-birds actually got this cam. It was a mid year production change and the 94 'birds got a 4.6. All 93 5.0 HOs got hypereutectic pistons unlike the 92 and earlier HOs which got forged pistons.

[gadget73]

i think the supposed gain with the cobra cam is a lower rpm torque peak at the expense of some hp. Similar results as the explorer cam, but not quite as much. Don't know how significant the change actually is though.


Only reason I said that I've never seen proof of someone identifying a stock cam is just that they don't really have markings on them. Take a dozen various factory roller cams and lay them out, and its damn difficult figuring out what is what unless you get out the measuring tools and start taking lobe dimensions. Mid year changes make it even more difficult to figure out what exactly you're looking at.