Pistons and rings arrived at the machinist today. Also, my valve springs and valve stem seals came in but I need to take them to the machinist so he can finish up the valve job.

I picked up my block, pistons, rings, main/rod bearings and heads from the machinist yesterday. I had to work on the Cobra today so I didn't get much done on this engine but I did manage to clean it along with the crank and then installed the main bearings and crank. Tomorrow I'll get all the pistons installed and check to see how far down in the hole they are so that I can order my head gaskets.

I got the short block assembled today. I'll post up pictures tomorrow because I'm too tired to do it tonight. I cc'd the combustion chambers and checked to see how far down the new pistons are so that I could order my head gaskets. The new pistons are .030 down, have +3cc valve reliefs and the heads have a 60cc combustion chamber after some unshrouding of the intake valve and being milled .020. So I ordered .039 (stock is .050) gaskets which should give me 9.11:1 compression.

Should easily run on 87, and should still make 250rwhp

With the stock exhaust manifolds I'm thinking 235-245 at the crank.

Here are some pictures.

Im talking the big picture after tha BAR

Exploder manifolds are some of the worst I've ever seen. Don't you dare run them! :nutkick: :D

I have no choice. I have to run them to get the truck BAR certified.

Can't you run mustang manifolds and notch the frame or something? What the hell is bar certified?

Bureau of Automotive Repair. They're the ones who do the engine swap certs.

OIC, a lesser known bar. Haha. Well be sure to junk them 4 hours after you get it certified ;)

For your amusement. Stock header (top) versus FRPP.

WOW! those things do suck. Engine looks good though Ron!

My head gasket arrived today so I went this afternoon also picked up some ARP head bolts from GTR High Performance. Tonight I installed the heads, pushrods and rockers and set the preload on the lifters. I also installed the lower intake which I painted black and the camshaft position sensor. Pictures from tonight. Sorry that they are so dark. I'll get some better ones tomorrow.

I'll walk over to my machinest and ask him about the bolts and what not, they probably took them off as a precaution

Thanks. I didn't know if you maybe took them off before you hot tanked it or if they did.

Here are more pictures.

That thing looks sweet. I know where I am going when my truck needs a rebuild.

Oh but if you do it here we'll have the fun times of taking it in and out a few times, :lmfao:

Thanks. I took a page out of the Shaolin Crane book of engine colors.

:).

:jester:

I haven't worked on this for a while but I got back to it today. It went a little slow today but only because I was training some new hired helpers. We picked up some new valve cover and exhaust bolts along with gaskets. What took the most time was getting the rusted exhaust flange bolts out. Worst part is I can't find anyone who carries replacements.

Here are some pictures from today.





















Tomorrow I'll start pulling the engine/trans/transfer case out on my truck.

King bolt in covina will have all that stuff, its walk from our shop. Give me the size and i'll get them for you

I think the ones one the 4.0 are the same size. If so, I'll be able to just use those. If not, I'll let you know.

The bolts for the 4.0 are the same so I'm going to use them. I worked on it all day today and got everything pulled. I only took a couple pictures which I'll post up later. If I have time tomorrow night I'll start swapping everything over from the '97 to the '95.

Before I started to remove anything from the '95 I measured the front and wrote down the height. This way I can see how much lower it ends up with the V8. I can already tell you that the V8 is quite a bit heavier.

The girls are so grown up!

I know. Only 6 more years and Kylie will be driving.

Here are the only pictures I took yesterday.

I was able to work on it a little tonight. I moved the throttle cable, cruise control and EVAP from the '97 to the '95. I also removed the complete engine/lighting wire harness from the '97. Next up will be to remove the one from the '95 and then install the '97 harness into the '95. Here's the only picture I took.

Ug, I hate wiring harnesses. Does it all plug in to the V6 chassis?

I got the engine harness out of the '95 and found that the pins are different on the dash harnesses. So I pulled the dash harness out of the '97 and I'm comparing it to the one in the '95. The '97 has a lot more options on it so it has more connectors but I think I'm going to be able to use the one that's in the '95 and just add the OBDII connector along with a few additional things that it needs for the OBDII. Last night I traced the wiring that goes back to the fuel pump/rear ABS/EVAP canister purge valve.

Here are some various pictures.

4.0 engine harness.

I was able to get some work done on the wiring harness today before it started raining. It was actually well timed because I had things to take my kids to and forgot about them. Luckily the rain made it so I was on time. Anyways, I traced down some of the wires that I don't have in the '95 that are in the '97 dash harness and moved them into the '95 dash harness. I was tracing the wires for the OBDII connector that is under the dash when I dicided to quit before it started to rain. Once I trace down all those I'll move them over to the '95. Here are a few pictures of the mess.







These are the wires that I had to add. I just added the wire to the factory connectors so that it was clean. These wires go under the drivers seat and then back to the fuel pump/EVAP purge/fuel tank pressure. There was one more wire that I connected but it is on the top side of the grey connector behind all the wires in the picture.

I got a little more done today after I prepped the Cobra for the autocross tomorrow. I was able to pull all the needed wires from the OBDII connector and install them in my harness. It turned out that I only needed to add three wires because my truck has an OBDII connector under the dash and it had 4 of the 7 already. They were in a different location than they were on the '97 so I moved those as well. Here's what the connector looks like and the dash harness that I had to trace them in.



This is where I had to add the three to match the engine harness.

I got a little more done on the truck. First, I dropped the tank on mine, pulled the fuel pump and drained it. Then I removed the bracket for the EVAP canisters. I didn't want to use the one off Eric's because it was rusted so I modified mine to fit the canister off his.

Here's mine after I cut it in half.



Here's the one off Eric's. As you can see the bracket is terrible.







This is what mine looked like after modifying it. I cut the end off the side I wasn't going to use and welded it on to the end of the side I used because I needed the canister rotated 90 degrees.





After I reinstalled my EVAP bracket I removed the old wiring harness for the fuel tank/ABS sensor and installed the one from Eric's truck because it had the extra wiring for the EVAP canister and fuel tank pressure sensor. After that I moved to the inside and started cutting/splicing the old harness with the new one.







I finished splicing in all the wires that I had in my old harness. Next up is to splice in the new ones that I had to add to my dash harness.

Looking good Ron. I just can not believe that you are doing this. I do not think I would even want to try and do what you are doing.

I wasn't really nervous about this conversion. I was when I cut the front end off to do the solid axle swap but not with this. I had a complete V8 Explorer so I knew if worse came to worse I could just move everything over. Plus if I did run into something computer wise that I couldn't figure out I have Phil. There isn't anything that he wouldn't be able to help me with. So far I've been able to figure out all the wiring and it looks more complicated than it is.

I dont want to try that, i cant even see the colors :smack:

I got some more done today and tried to take a lot of pictures. Nomally i'm so busy that I just don't get to them but I did today. So I started by installing the harness that I spliced together yesterday and then spliced the remaining wires into the harness.

Here is the harness installed, it goes through the floor and down the frame to the back of the truck.



Here are the remaining wires that needed to be spliced together.



I tried to make it look as clean as possible.







Then I spliced them together and finished tucking them away.





After that I moved to the engine harness. Here's the one from the V8 that going in my truck.



And here's my empty engine bay.



I started with switching the computer over.



Then I dropped the V8 harness in. Doesn't that look fun?




Kylie wasn't much of a help today.




And here's some of it done. I still have a lot more to do but soon I'll be ready to see if the engine is going to clear my steering box.

I finished running the engine harness today and then picked up some new motor mount and dropped the engine in.

That looks better.




Here's how the steering box looks in relation to the oil filter location. I think I'll be okay with a remote mount filter. I'll order one from Summit and see.






I still have a ton to do but I'm realy excited to have the engine in the truck.

I was going to install the trans today and started with instlling the flexplate and filling the converter up with ATF. However, while doing the remote oil filter kit arrived. So I held off installing the trans so I could check and make sure there was going to be enough room for the adapter plate. Unfortunately there isn't enough room to install the lines with the adapter plate on the engine. So I pulled the flexplate back off and pulled the engine again.

It's sad to be back on the stand.



I've decided what I'm going to try is to notch the frame to and move the steering box away from the engine some. Here's what I did so far.

The bracket in the old position.




The hole in the frame.



The piece I removed.



I'll reinforce the inside of the frame before I weld the bracket back in and I think with a couple 90 degree fittings that I'll have enough room to clear it.