5.0 Engine Tear Down/Disappointment
A bit disappointed in the tear down of the old 5.0 engine I had in the garage. I bought it years ago and was planning on putting it into an old 1987 F150 pickup that needed a replacement. Seller was nice and said it was a good Crown Vic engine and should be good to go. I’m glad I didn’t just dump it into something before tearing it apart now. Top end wise the engine was in really good shape. Rocker tips were not really worn, heads were reasonably clean as well as the lifter valley. We thought we may have just a little work to do to put a basic 5.0 long block together even if we ended up changing out heads to a better flowing solution.
BUT when we pulled the oil filter off it was empty… a bit surprised but hey the motor could have been leaned over to one side or something when out of the car that would have drained it. Then with the heads off the cylinders appeared to be in really good shape with little or not ring ridge anywhere and cylinder walls looking to be quite nice. Thought we may be able to even go back standard bore with it. However, I have not measured the bore and the rods do have number stampings on them so there is some possibility the engine has been apart and rebuilt at some point.
Then we figured we should pull a rod cap off since we were in this deep and was going to re-ring and re-bearing it no matter what. That is when the surprise and disappoint hit. First rod bearing was toasted. Either something nasty was in the oil OR the engine was fired up dry at some point as the bearings and rod journals are scored badly. It’s especially bad right were the oil holes are at so not exactly sure what may have occurred.
Disappointing but not the end. The blocks appears fine overall but obviously a VERY complete cleaning including knocking out oil galley plugs, gun cleaning kit scrub, vat, power wash, etc clean up will be done before reusing anything from here. Nice thing about the motor overall was all the front accessories were on the thing when we got it so all that can be cleaned, blasted and reused as needed.
Looks like a rotating assembly kit might be the best way to go anyhow at this point, maybe a 331 is in the Gal’s future.
