Need to do valve cover gaskets, Are there any upgrades I should do?

[BoulevardRide]

When is it a good idea to think about the timing chain on these? Are the gears metal or plastic? The engine seems like it's still tight, it don't act sloppy...

I'm pretty sure 88 was the year they went to the steel cam gear, before that it was plastic teeth. Plastic gets brittle with age as well as mileage/heat cycles, so you may want to verify that gear sooner rather than later, there's lots of examples online 5.0's with those plastic teeth looking pretty scary on inspection

[gadget73]

86 was steel. 87 seems to be hit and miss. 88+ is mostly steel, except for the ones that are not. I know someone who lost an engine in an 88 from a plastic cam gear. I know of no way to tell for absolute sure without removing the cover, but you can get a good indication of the condition by removing the distributor cap and using a breaker bar to rock the crank back and forth. A sloppy chain or worn gear will show noticeable crank movement before the rotor follows. Good parts won't have that.


If you want to do valve seals, you can, and there won't be any better time but its not a ton of fun. I don't like oil consumption, so if I'm adding at all between oil changes I want that to stop. Use the later style seals. Parts for say a 1996 Explorer should be the right one. Instead of the umbrella seal, its a style that seals more tightly. Make sure you clean off the valve stems if you do this. I wiped out a set in my own car after doing a cam swap. The only thing I can figure is the extra travel pushed a not-clean part of the valve stem through the seals and destroyed them. Rag with carb cleaner or whatever should do the job, just make sure there is no varnish or other crud on there. I used a Harbor Freight compression tester hose with the check valve removed to charge the cylinders. It mated to my air compressor without any fuss. Spring compressor was just the usual kind parts stores have with the 2 hooks and the handwheel to compress the spring. A small magnet to fish the retainers out is helpful. Honestly the most difficult part of it all was just the back pain from spending so long bent over the damn car. Should have put it on the jack stands for a little elevation.

[jaywish]

If yours are plastic forget what I said.

[DerekTheGreat]

...Well, I guess that's to be expected on a 30+ year old car with unknown maintenance. On this car, looks like it was the very basics that were done. (pretty much oil changes) I had to change all other fluids(including the diff). Most of them (other than oil and trans) were not the correct color anymore. It also had plugs, wires, cap and rotor that were dated 1988 before I got too it.

So far, my '88 is still running the OE valve seals. I won't figure they're bad until it starts fouling #8 or whatever like Ashley's '89 was. My car was also sporting original plugs and all that. First thing I do when I get a car is attain ground zero with new fluids & filters everywhere and replace obviously worn or dated things. It's upkeep after that.

But for what it's worth, Ashley rocks a '92 C1500 with it's original 350 V8 and it doesn't use or leak a drop of oil, 205k on the ODO. We estimate it sat for about 10 years before we picked it up just last year. The '95 350 in my '89 K1500 uses about a quart per 5,000k miles. Doesn't start to burn until after 3k. Now the rear main leaks a bit so I expect that to go up. 245k on it and ~160k on the engine. Point here is that the Fords have a shittier design/lower quality part by comparison.

[gadget73]

My Mark VII with 245k doesn't need oil between changes. It did need intake and valve cover gaskets. Never had valve seals done either. That car had a lot of highway miles though, it wasn't around town little old lady never warming up crap.

[DerekTheGreat]

The HO's are different animals. The one we had didn't use a whole lot of oil either, especially when compared to Ashley's 89 and my 88.

[gadget73]

same rear main seal and valve seals though. I suspect its more about usage and the wear that results than the different cam and forged pistons.

[DerekTheGreat]

Pistons probably have different rings though. I think Tiggie posted a thread about a TSB affecting at least '87-'91 LoPo's in which there was an oil consumption test done by the dealer and if a certain amount or beyond of oil was used, the pistons would get pulled and have new rings put on to correct oil consumption.

I haven't had one of these puke a rear main yet and I've owned a few LoPo turds in my time. Same deal with the HO variants I've had the pleasure to know. The only thing I definitively observed is that the HO's did not use no where near the same amount of oil the LoPo's in my life have.

[knucklehead0202]

My current LoPo randomly consumes oil, it's super-weird. I know the valve covers leak, but nothing on it leaks enough to drop on the ground. I'll drive it a while, continually checking the oil, and it'll be fine. Then it seems like 1 day it just decides to shit a quart of oil somewhere. Can't wait to get rid of it anyway. Haven't changed the oil in like 2 years but i've added some several times. Figure with the cycling, it's still clean enough to get me by until 347 goodness goes in. LoPo

[DerekTheGreat]

Yep. Mine is usually good until about 1k or 1,500 miles into the oil change. Then it gets thirsty. I have ZERO leaks though, so it can only be ingesting the stuff.

[gadget73]

Don't have access to my master parts manual to see if there are different rings, but I suppose thats not impossible. Its on the big storage drive in this machine, but that drive sucks so bad it makes everything run slow just by existing. It randomly decides that it needs to spin up and prove it's alive, and everything comes to a dead stop for 5 seconds or so whenever it does that.

[DerekTheGreat]

LoL.

Well if I wasn't so lazy I'd go hunt down the post from the Tig man. Would require quite a bit of digging though.

[ZackN920]

Oh man, this is gunna be long... Should have come back sooner.

I have not kept up with your threads, so I am not sure if you changed the engine oil if it was changed before you purchased it.
I mention this because someone could have put smokeless oil in the engine to cover up worn engine parts.

if you do not have evidence of a decent size leak it very well could be just burning the oil. ( do you still have the old plugs? ) could you post a picture of them?

Have you pulled a compression test? or checked for timing chain slack?

if the timing chain is original is it on borrowed time. ( to check for too much slop in the chain ) rotate the engine and number one piston to TDC of the compression stroke turning the engine in the normal direction of rotation with the rotor button pointing at #1 and the timing mark lined up at the crank at 0 deg.
then very slowly rotate the engine backwards while watching the rotor button once it starts to move stop turning the engine over by hand.
look at the timing marks to see how far the crank was able to move before the rotor moved this shows the amount of slop in the timing chain.

It has a been a long time but I think anything more than 5 deg shows a chain set in need of replacing.

Engine oil was the first thing I changed when I got the car in June 2019. I don't think it had been driven much since 2016. With the previous owner in his 80's at the time, I'm sure all the work was performed by a shop. When I bought the car, there was a sticker on the windshield that was dated 2016, either spring or summer. So that was probably the last time it had an oil change. I wouldn't know what it was, but it was dark coming out and the car had some no name filter on it. I put in Quaker State High Mileage Synth blend 10W30 oil with a Motorcraft FL-1A filter.
Now, as said before I have never noticed any smoke or burning oil smell behind the car. As to when it may be burning the oil, I'm not sure. We were using it primarily as a highway cruiser on the weekends after I had it on the road for about a month to shake things out. I don't know if it's more apt to burn it at sustained speeds or varying(like in town driving).

I do still have to old plugs. There in a box somewhere. At the time I didn't think nothin of the car burning oil, so I didn't really inspect them for being oil fowled. Overall though, even though they had been in the car since 1989, they looked pretty good to me.

Damn, I was hoping Ford would be different and that I'd be ok when it came to the timing chain. I've checked chains that way before. Kind of a pain with the fan in the way... OK, so below 5 degrees should be ok.

On the EGR spacer for the HO - you typically get the stock part bored for using stock HO throttle bodies, or use a relatively rare 93-95 Lightning spacer for larger throttle bodies. The stock HO spacer doesn’t have the correct mounting provisions for your throttle and TV cables.

On the oil consumption - 900 miles/quart was acceptable to Ford and oil usage is fairly common from when these were new. http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/showthre...onsumption-TSB. They don’t all do it but many have since new.

On the timing chain, check yours as EaOutlaw described above. I recently checked mine on my well maintained 88 with 245K on the original chain, and it showed zero slop. The timing sets is the later boxes (post plastic era) were decent quality.

Who bores them out? Will a traditional engine building shop do that? We got one outside of town, I used to know the main guy that worked there(from another business I worked at, at the time)
I'll have to look at how the cables are mounted. I wonder if I could make something... I'm getting better at fabbing, especially after I got a welder 'bout a year ago. Made lots of junk with that thing!

Yea, I read about that last year sometime and was shocked that that was considered acceptable. My car sounds about average according to the literature. I'll give that thread a read too.

Holy shiz! 245K miles!

It is a truism with 30+ yer old cars that taking care of everything nearby that is subject to age related deterioration when you do any job will almost certainly save you time and money in the long run. If it is a car you want to run for some time then it pays to do some extra when you can. It is a good idea to check the chain but as Tiggie said most of the steel ones were good so 100K miles is probably OK, still checking that before you get into many other improvements is a very good idea.

Get a rear sway in there you will love it.

If you were in Northern Yonkers instead of Northern Ill. I would tell you to come by and pick up an HO intake which I don't want to ship.

Yea, I agree with that. All my vehicles are old, and a lot of times when I do repairs I'm always picking up extra parts and doing a little extra to make sure everything is good. If I get a weird sound or feeling from any of them, I don't let it blossom into something bigger. Too many people unfortunately do then bitch about the big expense. Yea, I'll give it a check.

I'm sure I will love it. I'm still not used to a vehicle dipping as much as this thing does in some of the corners. Guess you could say that I can be a bit aggressive behind the wheel.
Only problem is, where the hell do you attach it? Do ya have to cut mounts off a junk yard car (cut off the axle and frame)?

Well, that'd be cool. Too bad I have no clue where that is, and that it's a full day's drive away

I'm pretty sure 88 was the year they went to the steel cam gear, before that it was plastic teeth. Plastic gets brittle with age as well as mileage/heat cycles, so you may want to verify that gear sooner rather than later, there's lots of examples online 5.0's with those plastic teeth looking pretty scary on inspection

...and how do ya do that? lol. That would have to wait until the water pump goes bad or I hear some flopping under the cover. I don't like digging that far in for nothing if it'd turn out to be a good all metal set. Now, if its halfways there because of a job, that's different.

86 was steel. 87 seems to be hit and miss. 88+ is mostly steel, except for the ones that are not. I know someone who lost an engine in an 88 from a plastic cam gear. I know of no way to tell for absolute sure without removing the cover, but you can get a good indication of the condition by removing the distributor cap and using a breaker bar to rock the crank back and forth. A sloppy chain or worn gear will show noticeable crank movement before the rotor follows. Good parts won't have that.


If you want to do valve seals, you can, and there won't be any better time but its not a ton of fun. I don't like oil consumption, so if I'm adding at all between oil changes I want that to stop. Use the later style seals. Parts for say a 1996 Explorer should be the right one. Instead of the umbrella seal, its a style that seals more tightly. Make sure you clean off the valve stems if you do this. I wiped out a set in my own car after doing a cam swap. The only thing I can figure is the extra travel pushed a not-clean part of the valve stem through the seals and destroyed them. Rag with carb cleaner or whatever should do the job, just make sure there is no varnish or other crud on there. I used a Harbor Freight compression tester hose with the check valve removed to charge the cylinders. It mated to my air compressor without any fuss. Spring compressor was just the usual kind parts stores have with the 2 hooks and the handwheel to compress the spring. A small magnet to fish the retainers out is helpful. Honestly the most difficult part of it all was just the back pain from spending so long bent over the damn car. Should have put it on the jack stands for a little elevation.

Wow. Why did they mix and match so much. That's just terrible.

Well, I wouldn't want to do them, but if it needs them I have no choice. I'm not just going to box it up and pretend there is nothing wrong, and just go with it. I might have said this above, maybe not but there is never any smoke on start up. Im pretty sure that's a good telltale sign of bad valve stem seals without opening an engine.
I looked at the '96 explorer seals... some of them don't really look much different, then there was another design available that looked kind of strange and chinsee.

Thanks for the advise.

So far, my '88 is still running the OE valve seals. I won't figure they're bad until it starts fouling #8 or whatever like Ashley's '89 was. My car was also sporting original plugs and all that. First thing I do when I get a car is attain ground zero with new fluids & filters everywhere and replace obviously worn or dated things. It's upkeep after that.

But for what it's worth, Ashley rocks a '92 C1500 with it's original 350 V8 and it doesn't use or leak a drop of oil, 205k on the ODO. We estimate it sat for about 10 years before we picked it up just last year. The '95 350 in my '89 K1500 uses about a quart per 5,000k miles. Doesn't start to burn until after 3k. Now the rear main leaks a bit so I expect that to go up. 245k on it and ~160k on the engine. Point here is that the Fords have a shittier design/lower quality part by comparison.

YUP.

Wow, sitting that long and then just putting it back into use is usually hell on engines. That's impressive to read about.
Surprisingly, my (154K mile) 350 doesn't leak either. It does burn some oil with in intown driving. Never see smoke or smell it but when oil change time comes around it's usually down to about 3.5quarts (that's what drains out). Seems to be better in that regard though on the highway. We took the ol' Suburban to the east side of NC last fall(20 hour drive) and little over a week later drove back to Northern IL. It only used about a quart in that whole trip. Put about a half quart in down there, and another half when we got back. I was originally figuring that we were goin to have to buy some oil on the trip...

My Mark VII with 245k doesn't need oil between changes. It did need intake and valve cover gaskets. Never had valve seals done either. That car had a lot of highway miles though, it wasn't around town little old lady never warming up crap.

Hmm, maybe that's a better sign for my car. My car was the highway driver for the previous owners too. I got old receipts from Cali and Flor for work performed and was told by the daughter of the prev owner of trips the family took in the car.

[ZackN920]

So, how does the oil consumption in these things not kill the catalytic converters? If this was so common that ford figured it was "normal" I would think my cats should be plugged up at 98K miles, yet the exhaust flow seems fine. I have no reason to believe they were ever changed.

OH, ive been reading more on what this thread was originally primarily about. Came across this thread : http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/showthre...oticable-gains
So, even though I didn't get the exact answer I wanted here, I found it there. There is apparently an increase of power! Not just throttle response. One guy said he and a bud with a stock car (both had dual exhaust too) had them dyno'd and the one with the HO stuff put out about 10 more HP to the rear end. Haven't read far enough in to see if there is a torque increase( I would hope so) but 10 to the wheels sounds pretty good. I Wonder how much that would equate to at the engine. Stock w/ single exhaust is rated 150hp/270tq. Dual is rated 160hp/280tq. Would that increase to the rear end power equate to something like 175hp/290lb? That'd be cool, especially if it still kept the same power/torque curve.

If that's the case, I'm pushing this work off for awhile. Make some junkyard runs in the spring/summer to see about finding some parts.


Oh, I just thought of this. Does anyone here do the EGR boring? Does anyone sell bored out units, maybe take the original back as a core? Just wondering so that if I don't find anyone local that I still had an option.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

JeffBoudah has offered the EGR boring service. He did the one for my car. Shoot him a PM and see if he responds. I’m not sure how often he comes around anymore, but the quality is good and you’re not paying and arm and a leg. I want to say he bores them out on a CNC machine.