My SVO Motor Mayhem

[SchoolBoy]

I assume you need to buy the drill and tap to install the bypass kit separately? How much extra did they run?

I had the drill bits, the tap was $35 or so....

Very nice indeed, I don't suppose you have more pics of the vacume line from the guage and where it goes into the bay do you? Mine's currently off a fuel pressure regulator with a T but was looking at moving it off the main tree.

The line for the boost gauge I tapped into the factory boost gauges line under the dash. Its black with a red line, it hides up under the sterring colume...

[Desi]

Ahhhhh now I understand, thanks I was half asleep when I posted that. I need to do something either move where it's connected or get a new gillis valve as the gauge I have varries to much

[SchoolBoy]

Ok So the installation of my brown tops and PE have been put on hold again. For my 5k mile oil change I finally treated the car to some mobile one synthetic. Well after the the change I now have a weird noise on deceleration from 1600rpm on down. Were thinking its a lifter or something to that affect. So that will need to be fixed before I move on.

[NAVYCAT]

ouch! that doesn't sound good.

[fordfreak300]

I hope find out what it is. I am thinking of a 2.3 turbo project in the future. It is nice to see all of your progress.

[SchoolBoy]

So the complete right up "with pics" to come a little bit later, but here is a quick run down..

We pulled the valve cover and inspected the valve train, all of which is good. Next up I swapped in my PE computer and fresh brown tops. When we started the motor it ran ruff for a moment then it smoothed out. So after a few cycles dad and I took the little beasty on a shake down run to town and back. So far our first impressions are greatly improved drivablility from not being so pig rich and more power.

[JTurbo]

Ok So the installation of my brown tops and PE have been put on hold again. For my 5k mile oil change I finally treated the car to some mobile one synthetic. Well after the the change I now have a weird noise on deceleration from 1600rpm on down. Were thinking its a lifter or something to that affect. So that will need to be fixed before I move on.

Glad to hear your shake down run was good. What happened to the weird noise mentioned above?

[SchoolBoy]

The noise has not gone away so that narrows it down to two suspects.
1.) Its the mobile one not doing as good of a job as real oil.
2.) The bearings in the bottem end were damaged when the head gasket let go so the motor would need to come back out to change and inspect them...
So my last test will be to dump the mobile one and replace it with real oil, if the noise goes away then I'll be happy.



This was a two fold project, I wanted to make sure the valve train was in good shape and to swap to my PE and fresh brown tops. Now for the pictures I promissed.......


To start with I pulled the intercooler, throttle body, and valve cover so dad could inspect the top end.


Finding nothing I went ahead with the PE swap... This is a shot of the eec that came out of the svo, at napa it shows up as a 85-86 2.3 and 2.3t eec so I know thats not right.


To get it out you have to remove one screw that holds the braket the eec slips into, and the other is the nut on the top of the computer case. So empty.... Lets shove a PE in there.....




Now if you have a inline intake and you want to swap injectors its really simple. First unhook the harness from the injectors. Then you will need to remove two screws, one is up by the 3rd-4th injectors and is an easy get with a 1/4 drive wrench and extention "I forget what size socket." Next unhook the pvc valve and rotate the hoses out of the way. Useing an even longer extention come in from the front of the motor between the altinator and the the block to get the second screw. Now remove the screw holding the pulse dampaner and get a long screwdriver. Using the screwdriver reach down behind the the intake manifold and carefully pry the white clip holding the fuel line "that comes from the dampaner" to the rail. Leave the other fuel line attached to the rail. Now you can push the rail away from the head and it should pop off. In my case the injectors stayed in the rail. Also unhook your nock sencer....
{side note} (If you are moving up to brown tops and a LA-3 or PE you will most likely be installing an AFPR. Some early fuel rails need to be ground on to make an after market AFPR sit on the rail. Some do not, but mine did [not shown here but I cover it back on page 2], if yours does, please completely remove the rail to do it.)



To get the injectors out of the rail just pull and twist to pop them out..


When you get them out be sure to clean the sockets in the rail and in the manifold. Once you have done that install your new brown tops and reassemble the whole mess. In this shot you can see my new flepro valve cover gasket is a test fit....




To install the gasket we actually glued it the the head using contact cement...




Then simply drop the valve cover on and bolt it down. We went a little bit farther and made gaskets for each bolt out of a old carb gasket just in case....




The last thing I did before putting everything back on was to modify the new throttle body gasket as the old had burned off in one area. Just mark it and cut it out....



After everything was back together we started the motor a few times so the pe could relearn. Now after a few test drives I belive the motor is nocking in high gear at WOT so I will check the timing and adjust as needed.....

[blue beast]

Well you guys certainly know what you're doing. Looks like i might have found the family to contact when i start looking at my friends SVO and swapping a xr-7 2.3 into my '80 Coupe, keep up the good work!

[Mr. Squirrel]

wow, I'm amazed how far you've taken the SVO. Its come along a long ways for sure. thanks for keeping us all posted on the progress

[SchoolBoy]

Its been a long time since I have updated this thread. I tried not to clutter this thread with my exhaust mods, dyno time, front mount intercooler build, and boost controller upgrades which you can read about in the these links below...

2009 dyno plus exhaust upgrade http://vb.foureyedpride.com/showthre...Dyno-d-finally
2014 front mount intercooler build http://vb.foureyedpride.com/showthre...-amp-D-project
2015 boost controller and bypass upgrade http://vb.foureyedpride.com/showthre...d-Bypass-Valve


Now after 8 years and only 40k miles I have to report that the motor in the svo is dead and ready for autopsy. long story short I've had detonation issues causing me to keep lowering the boost till I got down to only 12psi. When the dipstick blew out I knew I had a real problem. The compression and leak down tests confirmed that number one cylinder was losing 50% into the crank case. Cylinders 2-4 all showed 15% loss, which is pushing it as well. So for now the car gets parked for about 2 months while we do other fleet maintenance. When thats out of the way I'll have to pull the motor and like I said do a full autopsy. Hopefully I get away with a hone and new rings....

[PaceFever79]

Impressive thread revival!

Sorry it's bad news.

[mustangxtreme]

Wow Nelson, sorry to hear about your troubles. Good luck getting it all fixed , up and running.

[SchoolBoy]

Thanks guys, I definitely named the thread correctly!

But stay tuned because on top of the repair work I have some go fast goodies up my sleeves.

[NAVYCAT]

well that suck nelson! hope you can bring her back to life

[SchoolBoy]

Ok guys here's the big update.......


This weekend was fruitful, it took us Friday evening, all day Saturday, and part of tonight, but the motor is out, separated from the trans and resting on the engine stand. I hope to have the intake and exhaust manifolds off tomorrow and the long block totally disassembled the following night for autopsy.

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[SchoolBoy]

Well folks things were looking promising on the tear down with one exception.... till I got it to the machine shop....

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Getting the head off required pry bars because one of the arp head studs had corroded in the head along the smooth part part of the body... WFT The head itself was in great shape, and has only been milled .022 so not enough to raise the compression ratio to the point that would cause the detonation I was experiencing. Its too bad I won't be using it again.

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Head gasket looks to me like the the area's around the small water holes were starting to fail. Next time I think a cometic MLS gasket is going on.

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There was lots of cross hatching left in the bores but there were a few area's that had "V" shaped polished spots.

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Now the when we dropped the pistons out the top cap bearing all looked good but the rod end on number 2 was worn. And whats weird is it was worn in the exact same way as before...

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So we really started looking at it and it looked bent.
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All ready to go to the machine shop to get checked out.

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The shelving is starting to fill up already, kinda a case of build it and the parts will come.

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Now that we have covered the good and the bad lets get to the ugly....
We took all the parts to T&D Machine shop in kent to get checked out. He found that the block needs to bored to .030, which means a new set of CP pistons for $600 which I don't want to do. The number 2 rod was indead bent, my L2500F 50mm .020 pistons are in great shape and are reusable. I have already sourced a replacement set of stock rods out of a 88 turbocoupe motor thanks to ElaborateDream, unfortunately that block had pitted bores that wouldn't clean up at .020. I currently have a line on 2 other std bore turbo blocks for cheap, hopefully one of those pans out.

The new plan is have a fresh block bored for my .020 pistons, put new Total Seal CR3024-25 moly rings for $80, resize the rods with arp 151-6002 bolts, line bore the block. Now I'm tempted to put arp 151-5402 main studs in the motor but do these work with the oil pick up tube? Also needs top polish the crank along with the aux cam snout.



11 weeks left till the Props and Ponies Show, gonna lose a week looking for a block and 2 weeks in the machine shop. So who thinks we can get this up, running and broke in enough to make the 60 mile drive to the show August 20th?

[SchoolBoy]

Sorry guys I was hoping to give a week by week update but this rebuild turned into such a nightmare that I had to hold off on updating this till life settled down... ALOT

SVOJosh really saved the day by driving one of his spare blocks up to me from Oregon the day after driving home from the Carlisle show in PA. We took it down to the machine shop as soon as it was in our hands and it checked out! We had a bit of a fight with the machinist as he wanted to give us a piston to wall clearance of 5thousands just like the last guy did on the first motor. So after a day of arguing with him, he finally agreed to 3thousands when I showed the spec sheet that came with the pistons. He also installed a bad batch of bearings for the aux cam so those had to be replaced. Then for his final F' UP he thought the valve job in the head I got from Steve Scholdes was no good so he started grinding them without asking permission first. This destroyed all the work that steve put into the 4 angle valve job. So we took the head away from him and had C&D automotive machine fix that along with a few other nit pick things I'll get to later.

If your in the area I would take your motor to C&D in a heart beat! They are sharp guys who have been doing this a for about 30 years and have all the goodies...


Anyways onto the pics!

The bores came out nice from T&D, at least he got that and the bottom end tolerances correct.

IMG_35900 by Judge Dread, on Flickr

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Chasing all the head stud threads with a bottom tap

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Cleaned/oiled up the bore to Double checking ring end gaps to be .018-.020

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The other thing we had to do was go back and clean up the burrs and edges on the rings.

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[SchoolBoy]

Moving along to dropping the crank in with lube.... lots of lube.


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Now it should be mentioned here that the crank itself needed a tone of work. Dad had to make two trips to Tacoma once to drop off the crank and one a few days later to pick it up. The shop down there straightened it, and ground the journals with massive stones. From there it was brought back up to perpetual balance here on the Arlington airport to be balanced along with the rods, pistons, flywheel, and pressure plate. After all that the rotating assembly went back down to T&D to be final polished and measured so the block could be line bored to match.

IMG_36290 by Judge Dread, on Flickr

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Now when we put the rear main cap on we put a very small bead of silicone in the corners because if you look the cap has small 45* angles causing a potential oil leak.

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Make sure to wipe up any excess.

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Two out of four of my original rods were bent badly enough you could see it, so T&D mixed and matched my rods and the ones I got from elaboratedream till he had a full set that were straight. He also talked me into ARP studs for the rods as well.

IMG_36570 by Judge Dread, on Flickr

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A good pic of the unicorns as some of the old timers have called them.
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All in!

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[JTurbo]

Looking good Nelson. That's a ton of progress.

I'm starting to think your SVO is my west coast twin with the engine troubles we both had.....

[SchoolBoy]

Thanks! I know these updates are long over due but that's what happens when your trying to make a dead line, buy a new toy, and then have to rush prep for your first hunting trip ever in only 3 months time.

All svo's are twins, hell honestly all svo's are just trouble creatures.

[flyboy60]

Bump!!!
Anymore updates?

[SchoolBoy]

Yaaaa, I totally forgot about my own thread. The short version is living life and jumping from one must do project to the next became more important than documenting it. But I will get back on this very soon.

[SchoolBoy]

So better late than never but here we go again.... Thread revival!

Moving forward with the build a little permatex on the crank seal before driving it home with our handy home made tool.
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Repeat for the aux cam cover and seal.
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For the gaskets we use contact cement which might seam like overkill but they don't leak!
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Out of three Aux cams I had the machine shop pick from only one was usable after being trued up.
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Now for the screws that hold the aux cam retainer on we used a little red Loctite to make sure they don't back out.
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[SchoolBoy]

Once the contact cement dries on the one side of the gasket we use permatex for the block side.
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Now I wanted to reuse the oil pump from the last build with 40k miles because a new one was sever days out we opened it up inspected it. A little plasti gauge confirmed that it was within spec so we buttoned it up and bolted in.
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Now for one of our super secret mods that Chalky turned us onto. We use the one piece rubber oil pan gasket from the ranger, felpro part #OS34211R. Now as you'll see in the pic it takes few little mods. Coupled with a healthy does of silicone on the front and rear main cap grooves this produces a zero leak seal. Two sets of hands are recommended so as to minimize disturbing the silicone when you put the gasket in place.
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At this point with only two weekends left before the car show that I'm supposed to take the svo to, life threw me a curve ball that I couldn't resist. The short story is the add with only one picture was only up for 30 minutes before I contacted the owner, by that evening a deal was struck for my dad to drive the 120 miles down and see the truck an hour before another buyer because I had to work that Thursday. So I put money in dads hands with the understanding that if it was nice enough that he would drive it with no hesitations to buy it. You wanna talk about the most nail biting day at work EVER waiting for dad to call..... Which came in at 10:30 am, "kid I bought it before I got out of the ranger!" So ya we went back down that weekend and brought it home burning a very precious day off that should have been spent on the svo motor but it was worth it....

Anyways I'm now the 4th proud owner of a 114k mile survivor 1979 F150, 5.0L, C6, twin fuel tanks.
IMG_0092 by Judge Dread, on Flickr