A Tale of an engine swap
Ready for a long story of woe and mistakes?
It had been fairly obvious from mid summer last year that the engine in my cabrio (Ford 2.0l DOHC on carbs) was emitting a bit of oily smoke after idling for a while and then moving off. The engine had done 140k miles and had also spent 6 years in the corner of the garage before being used.
Cabrioman had a surplus engine Ford 2.0l DOHC that had done about 40k miles, and last autumn, accompanied by daughter, we made a 500 mile round trip to collect the engine, which he donated for nothing. Along with the engine I was given the ECU and a tangle of wires that were from the engine wiring loom. Lots of the wire had been snipped. This engine was fuel injected.
I had planned to do something last winter, but the weather around Christmas wasn’t really suitable for taking engines out in an unheated garage, so I spent my time trying to get to grips with, and failing to understand the wiring loom.
Coming up to the second May bank holiday I decided I had to do the swap. By now in traffic the car behind would briefly disappear behind a cloud of blue smoke as I pulled away. But I thought I had a cunning plan. Easy-peasy: Swap the engines, but keep the inlet manifold and ECU and run on carbs. So the transplant happened.
However after I removed the manifolds (and managing to break a couple of bits of the injection system in the process) I then discovered the inlet ports were different to accept the injectors. Looking at my old head I could see that on exhaust valves for cylinders 2 and 3 was a huge amount of carbon deposit.
So the next plan was to swap heads, after getting my old one refurbished. So heads off, Cabrioman’s engine had negligible wear ridges in the bore, and mine had some but less than I expected.
I went and bought a new vale spring compressor, and then discovered the vales were so deeply recessed in the head you needed a special Ford compressor to get the valves out. So I took the head to a friendly mechanic who removed the valves. All the exhaust values were a bit sloppy in the guides, so we sent the head of to have new valves, seats and a light skim. It was gone for 4 weeks….
The head came back and I had the devil’s own job getting the valve timing right due to the complete absence of info in the Haynes manual. To compound matters the timing chain tensioner is spring loaded and has to be unlatched. If it becomes unlatched it can’t be re-used. Guess who accidentally unlatched it? And the replacement cost nearly £50.
Then when fitting the inlet manifold I managed to tap an electrical connector on the carb and the end broke off. I trip back to Ford and they ordered the new part, with the promise to phone me. I went back a week later and they explained they had not phoned because the part was no longer available.
The carb was a Weber item so I contacted Weber. No, that didn’t have the item anymore either, however they listed a replacement carb on their website, so I tried to buy one of those. Now they may have listed it, but it was obsolete and no longer supplied.
I did speak to a carb expert and was told it was an anti-dieseling solenoid and a careful examination of the component showed a fine wire sticking out very slightly. I managed to solder a fine wire on the end and checked it still operated, and it did, so I potted the end in araldite and connected it up.
So yesterday I tried to crank the engine over, to be accompanied by a horrid grunching sound. The started motor was not properly engaging and dropping out. Fortunately Cabrioman had give me a spare. I fitted that and brrrrmmm!
Feeling smug I tried to engage a gear, but the clutch just wouldn’t clear. I tried brutal things like standing on the brakes and with the clutch depressed cranking the engine. No success, just hot wires to the starter motor.
So the engine is now sitting on the garage floor. The clutch friction plate had managed to bond with the flywheel and need to removed with a chisel.
Watch this space!
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