You, less talky more worky.....

   After couple of weeks of getting the suspension mocked up, wheel fitment, and finally setting it down on the tires; it was finally the moment of truth.  Time to finally set the motor in for the first time.  So later one night after work we started on the process of moving the engine from the floor to the car.  This isn't so much of a step-by-step procedure, but more of a problem-solving exercise.

Problem 1 - Lift Chains that are right for a 289 are not right for a 5.4L DOHC engine

    First problem was trying to figure out where is a safe place to lift the engine.  When I was taking the thing out of my truck I just grabbed it at the transmission and original engine mounts.  I saw some pictures where the factory engine lifts attach to the heads, so instead of paying $100-$200 for those simple brackets, I just thought I bolt the chain directly to the heads.  Yah so I had Paul and Jeremy come over from work and we were all gun-ho to get this beast in.  This is when I really got a first hand slap in the face as to how W..I..D..E  this engine really is.  Needless to say we had to run down to Lowe's to get some longer chains.  With that solved it was an easy task to lift it up and start taking things off to make it easy to test fit.

Oops 1 - Drained engines are not always 100% drained

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Here we see Jeremy taking off various hoes and items so that I'm not knocked everything around when we try to put the engine in.  Notice the bucket of muck in the middle.  I think it has power steering fluid, engine oil, and coolant all mixed in there.  We were all kinda dumbfounded by the amount of wires and hoses on this engine.  Paul says that it looks like the engine is on life-support, and I agree.  He still thinks I won't be able to get everything back on, but I've got a pretty good memory (and lots of pictures) to help me along my way.  Oh and always make sure the return valve for the engine lift is completely closed while your working on it.  Jeremy was the first to notice the engine slowly drifting down.  And about that time it started to pick up some speed which lead to alot of "What the crap were you doing?"  I still haven't figure out how that happened yet, but it's never done it again since then.

Step 1 - Line up for entry

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  So by the time we finally had everything stripped off and ready to go it was pretty late so Jeremy headed home, and Paul was in the process of leaving.  I'm for one never like stopping at project right before a great achievement is accomplished, so I started to work getting the engine in (Remember all those "It will just take a minute" and then you see the sun come up moments Johnny?)  Anyways, this engine is alot longer than the other one and I dont' have the height here in the garage to really pitch it down and in.  (Don't tell my wife but I accidentally jacked the engine into the ceiling the first time and now have a big hole there that I need to fix).  So the method here was to twist it a bit and have the tailshaft get down low enough to pitch it into the transmission tunnel.

Step 2 - The Twist

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It took every bit of twist to get this engine down into the engine bay, but after a bit of persuasion here and there I was able to finally get the tailshaft down and into the transmission tunnel.

Step 3 - Load Balancers

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This is was is really nice about load balancers.  You can pivot the engine to just about any orientation that you want.  Here we see the engine finally slipping into it's home.  One thing to note though, see how much the engine is still sticking over the radiator support, yet it's already a good ways under the firewall?  Yah....it only gets better from here.

Step 4 - Wow it might actually work...

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Well there was a combination of pushing on the tailshaft and shove the engine backwards to get to this point.  But the mass slowly marched it way back into the hole and I was well on the way to getting the engine set in.

Problem 2 - The fun begins...

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So all the stories of "it will just slide in there" were totally false.  Which I knew they would be buy just eyeing that mass of metal on the floor before I even picked it up.  Here is it's new "home."  The bellhousing is crammed against the firewall and the oil pan still hasn't cleared the suspension crossmember yet.  So, frusted that I came so close yet my fingers slipped from my goal of getting the engine bolted in tonight.  I went to sleep and waited for the weekend for my little brother, John, to come down and fight it again.

Step 5 - Test fit engine without the transmission

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The next day, John helped me take the transmission off and we went back to getting the engine back down.  We still had to fight it a bit because the clutch was hitting the firewall but we finally got it lowered into place.

Goal 1 - The Wrangled Snake

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YAH!!! ALRIGHT!!!!  IT'S FINALLY IN!!! OH MY GOD IT'S FINALLY IN!!!

A few last words

    Well it "technically" fits.  The engine itself that is.  Now comes the fun part of trying to make everything else works with it.  I really would like to thank Paul, Jeremey, and John for helping me out here.  For how much bigger this engine is, it actually sits down quite nicely.  Paying $250 for the TCP engine mounts was defintely money well spent.  I don't want to even think about how difficult it would of been trying to figure those creatures out.  You might of noticed the radiator support is bent a little bit.  When I first bought the car it had been fixed once before.  Looks like they drove into a pole or something.  Either way, I didn't care about mucking it up because I have to cut it out for a larger radiator anyways.  And you'll see that I actually had to do major surgery to the front of this car to get all the cooling capacity I needed.  But that's another page, that I'll be uploaded here in a bit.
   Anyways, here are a few more pictures of the engine bay, and all the fun things I'm going to have to do to get this engine back on life support.