[antics]

Or you can make your own. The piece of steel is essentially a slap of metal 1/4" thick, and the pin is a screw that threads correctly (sorry, i dont have the thread pitch, but you can trial-and-error that) that is 1 7/16" long.

If it is a .25" slot, a piece of plate aluminum cut into an L shape would be perfect for orienting the cam timing wheel. Is the .25" an eyeball or have you measured it?

Take the cam out of the head, place the long side of the L in the slot and let the short side run up against the side of the timing wheel. Score the sensor wheel or mark it where it contacts the L. Pull the wheel, press it onto the new cam in roughly the right spot, then tap it into place until the score mark is in the same position with the L. This should be a pretty foolproof way of orienting the cam timing wheel. As long as the L fits as tightly in the slot as my Massive SST it should be perfect.

I know I've got some .25 aluminum plate pieces somewhere, need to find it and give this a shot.

 

[Viktimize]

It is possible, it is used. No codes, although I haven't had it run for pending. But it's been several hundred miles with no light.

Let me ask you this - on a solenoid that is operating correctly, if you disconnect the line from the firewall while the car is running, should you get hissing from a vac leak? In other words, should the solenoid be open all the time when the engine is running? If not, when does it open? Because I fiddled with the screw while it was running and nothing happened. Even unplugged it while it was running and nothing happened.

Don't quote me, but as far I know it just opens at a set pressure to purge. So it depends completely on how much fuel vapour is getting in your evaporator.

I would think a failed one would possibly just hiss all the time as it is constantly passing and never sealing. It's basically simulating a vacuum leak, which is why you have issues with idle.

 

[Viktimize]

I think I'm going to just go ahead and jimmy rig some timing lock tools. Sick of waiting and want this car done by the end of the weekend.

What did everyone do to make sure the crank doesn't spin once the damper is off, or once you impact it on? I'm really surprised that with Fords shitty engineering job on this crank damper in the first place, that they didn't add a spot on the rear of the block to thread a bolt through a flywheel hole and into the block, to prevent the crank from moving when you re-install the damper.

EDIT- I'm over thinking this. Just going to use a paint marker and mark one of the cogs on the flywheel, and then put a mark on the block to line it up with. Pull the damper, have someone put a wrench on one of the flywheel bolts and hold the flywheel in line with the paint marker marks, impact on the new damper and call it a day.

 

[zoomtictac]

I think I'm going to just go ahead and jimmy rig some timing lock tools. Sick of waiting and want this car done by the end of the weekend.

What did everyone do to make sure the crank doesn't spin once the damper is off, or once you impact it on? I'm really surprised that with Fords shitty engineering job on this crank damper in the first place, that they didn't add a spot on the rear of the block to thread a bolt through a flywheel hole and into the block, to prevent the crank from moving when you re-install the damper.

EDIT- I'm over thinking this. Just going to use a paint marker and mark one of the cogs on the flywheel, and then put a mark on the block to line it up with. Pull the damper, have someone put a wrench on one of the flywheel bolts and hold the flywheel in line with the paint marker marks, impact on the new damper and call it a day.

Pretty sure that cost me all of like $4, between the 18" length of chain and two bolts. Had washers lying around, bought longer bolts to be sure they threaded as deep as I wanted them to, then stacked the washers to fill the gap between the chain and the bolt heads. A bit of trial and error finding the right combination of bolt holes vs the length of the chain links, but I got it lined up in a couple tries.

 

[zoomtictac]

If it is a .25" slot, a piece of plate aluminum cut into an L shape would be perfect for orienting the cam timing wheel. Is the .25" an eyeball or have you measured it?

Take the cam out of the head, place the long side of the L in the slot and let the short side run up against the side of the timing wheel. Score the sensor wheel or mark it where it contacts the L. Pull the wheel, press it onto the new cam in roughly the right spot, then tap it into place until the score mark is in the same position with the L. This should be a pretty foolproof way of orienting the cam timing wheel. As long as the L fits as tightly in the slot as my Massive SST it should be perfect.

I know I've got some .25 aluminum plate pieces somewhere, need to find it and give this a shot.

That sounds like a brilliant idea. Should work perfectly, yes. And the 1/4 is a ballpark, I haven't measured it. All it would take is measuring the slots on the back of the cam though.

 

[antics]

This thing about working on my car 35 miles away is turning out to be very inconvenient. Lol. I think I'm going to drive there when I get off work and measure how thick the massive sst is.

 

[Viktimize]

Pretty sure that cost me all of like $4, between the 18" length of chain and two bolts. Had washers lying around, bought longer bolts to be sure they threaded as deep as I wanted them to, then stacked the washers to fill the gap between the chain and the bolt heads. A bit of trial and error finding the right combination of bolt holes vs the length of the chain links, but I got it lined up in a couple tries.

Nice ingenuity. That will work perfect to et the extra crush on the washer once I have the damper impacted on.

 

[Shotgunner]

My car lives again! Sort of! I tried positioning the crank position sensor closer to the pulley, and after placing it differently a few times, it fired right up! However...with the Ford sensor it ran a little rough and threw a CEL, and with the Mazda sensor it ran a little rough and wouldn't maintain idle (though the CEL went off!) Anyway, I don't think there's a way to jerry rig the sensor to the timing cover in a secure way, so it looks like I'll have to pull it all apart again and swap out the timing cover. At least now I have confirmed that was the problem, and that it should run fine once we get the right cover on. Hopefully I'll be able to do this in the near future, and will follow up with real good news. Thanks for the help and info guys!

 

[zoomtictac]

My car lives again! Sort of! I tried positioning the crank position sensor closer to the pulley, and after placing it differently a few times, it fired right up! However...with the Ford sensor it ran a little rough and threw a CEL, and with the Mazda sensor it ran a little rough and wouldn't maintain idle (though the CEL went off!) Anyway, I don't think there's a way to jerry rig the sensor to the timing cover in a secure way, so it looks like I'll have to pull it all apart again and swap out the timing cover. At least now I have confirmed that was the problem, and that it should run fine once we get the right cover on. Hopefully I'll be able to do this in the near future, and will follow up with real good news. Thanks for the help and info guys!

Congrats on figuring it out! It may be a bit easier to get to all of that if you put the engine on the hoist and unbolt the engine mounts, that way it may be able to shift/tilt away from that side, giving you more access without actually taking the whole thing back out.

 

[antics]

Did the cam position sensor timing wheel today, after that I RTVd the timing cover and oil pan on. Started putting accessories back on as well. Tomorrow I'll finish rebuilding the 2.5 and get the wiring harnesses installed.

Instead of using plate, I got a piece of 3x3 angle. I lined this up with the timing slot on the cam and put a small cut on the timing wheel with a dremel and cut off wheel.

Pulling off the 2.3 timing wheel.

2005 2.3 on the left, 2.5 on the right.

Pressed the wheel onto the 2.5 cam with a 32mm axle bolt socket, then tapped into perfect alignment with a punch and hammer. You can see the cut I made for the reference point.

 

[The-Kid]

thats basically what i did on mine. i scribed a cpl lines where the timing groove was on the cam onto the timing cog, pressed it off, pressed it back on, and tapped on it until i had a perfect alignment.

 

[2408457]

I would just like the drop in and say that over the last 2 days at work I've managed to read every single page on this thread for the pure enjoyment of it.

It all started with a search for my weird idle issue and now I feel like I personally know all the people involved in these swaps.

 

[antics]

Anyone know of you can completely remove the bolt holding the vvt actuator without removing the timing cover? I've already rtvd my timing cover but I've gotten an itch to loctite the cam bolt after reading a post on massive's forums. Id like to avoid removing the entire cam if possible.

 

[Viktimize]

I got sick of waiting for timing tools to show up. So I pulled the valve cover off to see what I could use in the garage. Had some small 9mm and 10mm combination wrenches. The handles slipped perfectly into the cam slots. Same as using a piece of 1/4" steel or whatever. Marked the flywheel and the block with some marks to line them up if anything moved, then impacted the crank damper off. Nothing seemed to move, so put the old 2.3 damper on the new engine, impacted it on and everything seemed to stay lined up with the crank.

Installed the clutch, transmission and wiring harness. Engine is ready to go back in. Ill put the extra crush on that crank damper bolt once the engine is installed in the car. Then I don't have to worry about rigging up some stuff to hold the engine steady while doing it.

 

[zoomtictac]

If that were my car, I would not be okay with the new crank bolt being impacted on at all. That bolt has a very specific torque procedure, and with the stress given by the air wrench, you may have already started the stretch...

Of course I could be wrong. Good luck.

 

[antics]

What sensor is the one next to the coolant temperature sensor on the harness? I didn't label the harness fit that one and can't find what it connects to. It's got to be very close to the cts.

The orange one that's front and center

*Found it finally. It's a sensor on the vacuum line. I had forgot that the line even had a sensor on it.

 

[zoomtictac]

There was one I hunted for for probably an hour lol, turned out being on the bottom side of the heater block. Impossible to find visually with literally everything else in place. I had to blindly feel around every square inch with my fingers to find it.

 

[antics]

So I had a setback today.

My 2.5 is out of a Mariner. One of the Ford parts diagrams showed that the camshaft washers are on manual vehicles only. I already wanted to loctite my cam bolts, so I decided to install friction washers on the cams and loctite them when I reassembled. I followed Cosworth's writeup about installing their cams without removing the engine. I locked the timing chain tensioner and removed the exhaust cam sprocket to make slack in the chain. My plan at that point was to remove the entire intake cam and put the washer in. While I was working on this, I bumped the contraption I had rigged up to keep the timing chain tight and it dropped enough of the chain into the engine to let it slip off of the crankshaft sprocket. I had to pull the entire timing cover again to get the timing chain back in position. New crank bolt and 2 washers, a nice $50 mistake.

I can confirm that my 2.5 did not already have friction washers on the cams though. I put them in there and used red loctite on the bolts. Retiming the engine and the crank bolt tightening procedure was extremely easy the second time around.

Going to start putting it back in the car tomorrow morning and hopefully have it finished this weekend.

 

[zoomtictac]

So I had a setback today.

My 2.5 is out of a Mariner. One of the Ford parts diagrams showed that the camshaft washers are on manual vehicles only. I already wanted to loctite my cam bolts, so I decided to install friction washers on the cams and loctite them when I reassembled. I followed Cosworth's writeup about installing their cams without removing the engine. I locked the timing chain tensioner and removed the exhaust cam sprocket to make slack in the chain. My plan at that point was to remove the entire intake cam and put the washer in. While I was working on this, I bumped the contraption I had rigged up to keep the timing chain tight and it dropped enough of the chain into the engine to let it slip off of the crankshaft sprocket. I had to pull the entire timing cover again to get the timing chain back in position. New crank bolt and 2 washers, a nice $50 mistake.

I can confirm that my 2.5 did not already have friction washers on the cams though. I put them in there and used red loctite on the bolts. Retiming the engine and the crank bolt tightening procedure was extremely easy the second time around.

Going to start putting it back in the car tomorrow morning and hopefully have it finished this weekend.

Ah, that's good information about the friction washers only being on manuals. Mine didn't have them either, I was a little confused about that. The cam washers were the one piece that I had neglected to buy, and I made the executive decision in the thick of it to re-use the cam washers from my engine... which is the reason for my posts earlier in the thread about possibly cutting the timing cover to get more access after the engine is installed, and I believe you suggested using a crow's foot. The cam CEL went away and never came back on mine, knock on wood... In theory though, if it slips and the light does come back, it will be the opposite (retard vs advance), and I'll know exactly what procedure to use! Good info.

 

[antics]

Ah, that's good information about the friction washers only being on manuals. Mine didn't have them either, I was a little confused about that. The cam washers were the one piece that I had neglected to buy, and I made the executive decision in the thick of it to re-use the cam washers from my engine... which is the reason for my posts earlier in the thread about possibly cutting the timing cover to get more access after the engine is installed, and I believe you suggested using a crow's foot. The cam CEL went away and never came back on mine, knock on wood... In theory though, if it slips and the light does come back, it will be the opposite (retard vs advance), and I'll know exactly what procedure to use! Good info.

I remember when you asked that. I bought a 21 mm crows foot but it's too thick and would have to be ground a little less than 1/4" thinner. There is just not much room between the timing cover and intake cam bolt. I ended up torquing mine with the timing cover off so I didn't even have to mess with it.