mass-hole

Finally a minute to get some of the glamour shots up. What you are looking at is the passenger side of the block, below the exhaust manifold. I believe the rod is behind the motor mount, inside of the "galley thingy":



This is whats inside the galley thingy. That thing above the "IDK what this hole is" might be the rod:



This is the area I am looking at(not my photo):



Additional Damage. That threaded plug is in the two pictures on the right and boss looks damaged:

mass-hole

So I am having a shop replace the motor. I would do it myself, but in order to get any form of warranty(4 yr, unlimited mile) with the reman'd engine I need to have it installed by a licensed shop so I have decided to just do that. They are claiming 4-6 weeks for the engine.

The engine is from LKQ and allegedly LKQ is supplying Ford their reman'd engines, so I probably would have ended up with the same engine had I gone through a dealer.

jwanck11

I agree regarding aftermarket tunes and towing under heavy load conditions. I warped both manifolds. I don't think they are malicious, but I am not sure the OEM set up is built to take the higher temps (given the poor bolt layout of the EB manifolds.)

mass-hole

100%. They left very little margin best I can tell. Not that I think the engines are weak but I think they are able to be pretty precise as far as how much they need to overbuild them with all the fancy simulations and stuff they can do now. i wont tow with a tune again and probably wont run a tune at all on a first gen 3.5L.

mass-hole

I got the truck back with the LKQ motor. The only issue ive had was that the shop had to use an aftermarket thermostat because the motorcraft ones were back ordered. Immediately i was seeing the truck run at 212-214* on flat ground at 50 mph and was getting up to 228-229* on hills.

brought it back and they allegedly replaced the thermostat with a motorcraft, but as soon as I left last friday I hit a hill and was at 229F again. Saturday I drained the coolant and pulled the tstat and, wouldnt you know, a Motorad. I popped in a known good 188F Stant superstat I had and it immediately fixed it. Truck hasnt broken 203F

mass-hole

One thing I forgot to mention that the shop told me. When they swapped the new motor in they used the high pressure fuel pump off my old engine. When they went to start the new engine they said it could barely run and was throwing fuel codes so they replaced the HPFP.

I kinda suspect now that my HPFP might had crapped the bed on me which caused the motor to go lean and took it out.

1STtimer

How does one know that the HPFP is going bad in order to replace it preventatively?

Sucks man. How much was it again for the reman LKQ and the install?

mass-hole

I paid $11.5k all said and done including the engine, labor, new waterpump, thermostat, HPFP, exhaust manifolds and a few other items LQK required. Motor was 6.5k including core and the shop charged I think $3200 for labor, which I thought was fairly reasonable.

IDK. I got no fuel related codes even after the engine blew. It kinda makes sense though because the truck lost power so I wonder if it wasnt getting the fuel and was cutting boost to compensate. You would have thought it would have thrown a code though.

1STtimer

Honestly, that seems decent. Of course, if it were me, I would have upgraded a lot during this process making my costs higher. I wouldn’t want to do it again!

how is the new motor working? Are you running any tunes?

mass-hole

Other than correcting for my tire size, no, its bone stock with the exception of my CVF Intercooler. If it didnt have the intercooler it would honestly be pathetic. I removed my S&B intake even. I do run 94 octane when towing and it does well enough. I find it will start to cut power on longer grades, which I believe is probably the PCM trying to control EGT's.

I was close to pulling the trigger on a set of Garrett Powermax turbos when Full-Race had them on sale for black friday. I was just gunna run them on the stock tune and hope maybe the larger compressor and turbine would help the truck breath a little better under load while towing. Since I am at 6500', my turbos are getting spun pretty hard even just to make stock power.

Full race did just come out with a nice set of manifolds for the first gen as well. If I do ever decide to do the turbos I may do the full race manifolds as well and really get it breathing freely.