When I pulled my old head off to put my newly rebuilt head on from my previous update I found out I had a lot of slop in the pistons. It had been making some noise for awhile so it wasn't a big surprise. I decided since I already had the head off I might as well rebuild the rest while I was in there and of coarse take a lot of pics.
A few nice before examples before I started the tear down. 150k miles of worth of goo.
You can see a few of my previous mods in that second pic where I got rid off the balance shafts and enlarged the oil pickup opening
I was rather surprised at how good everything still looked with 150k miles of abuse other then the pistons which looked pretty bad.
I didn't feel like having to do this again for awhile so a splurged on a set of forged 20 over Wiseco pistons. Hopefully they can hold up to any abuse I throw at them.
A few shots of the block after a trip to the machine shop.
Had to stick another good pic of those sweet pistons in here. My rods were reconditioned and had ARP bolts added for extra strength. Probably not needed but cheap insurance.
Pistons and crank back in along with a nice Ford red paint job.
Things are really starting to come together now. I went with ARP head stud for their superior clamping force and reusability. They cost a little bit but should be worth it. If you missed my head rebuild head over to my Head Rebuild page and check it out.
And about four months after starting everything is back together and working. Only had one big scare when I first tried to start it up. Something made all kinds of crazy clanking and rubbing noises but it just ended up being the lower trans cover rubbing on the torque converter. Its running great so far and feels pretty good at my break in boost of only 8psi. We will have to wait till I get atleast 1k miles on it before I go back up to 18psi and take it the track to see what kind of improvements I have really made. I got rid of most of the nasty brittle plastic vacuum lines and only hooked up the few things the van really needs to a vacuum block mounted to the back of the intake. I still need to bend up some brake lines to replace that long ugly rubber line for my 5th injector but that can wait awhile.
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