3L install from hell!

[fastcougar]

Well, I'm not sure where to begin, so it might help to tell this tale chronologically. Since totaling the Contour, I have had many inquiries into the engine/trans since placing the for sale ad in the classifieds. However, only one lucky soul was fortunate enough to get the entire setup and that person stands before us:

SVT3391 (Rick)


Rick had basically agreed to buy the engine/trans out of the totaled Contour ... you know, the one with only 110-120 miles on it before I rolled the car ... yeah, that one.

So, in our discussions on price and what not, we agreed that I would give Rick a price break for keeping his SVT engine. Rick had also lined up a buyer for the trans already and since I was essentially buying his engine and would be shipping the trans for him to the new owner, I thought it best to test drive the car. So, we agreed to meet on Friday 9/22 after work so I could drive the car.

I test drive the car around 7:15 and I'm very pleased ... the clutch engages nicely with no signs of slipping and the engine revs nice and smooth with no odd sounds. I literally drive less than 3 miles and never got the engine over 6,000 RPM ... why do I mention this ... because when we get back to my office, we park the car and start talking about swap. We sit and talk for about 3-4 minutes when I start to see steam coming up from under the hood. I quickly glance down and see the temp gage in the red and quickly shut off the engine and pop the hood.

At this point, I'm thinking that I'm cursed and shouldn't be around SVT Contours and should stick to driving Cougars

Options are limited at this point. Either Rick calls a tow truck to haul him from there to my house or we save quite a few bucks and drive back to my place and either A) rape my race block of it's nice new water pump or B) get my tow dolly, hook it up to my 97 Explorer (for sale BTW) and tow it back to the house. We talk it over for a little bit and decide that the swap has officially began and it was to start with a 48 mile trip to my house to pick up the dolly.

Now, by this time it's probably close to 8PM. The drive home is 1 hour and 5 minutes. Get home just after 9, load up the truck and get on our way. Had to stop at AutoZone for some radiator fluid for the swap and also had to pick up a tire gage since the tow dolly tires where at 40 psi and the SOB was bouncing around in the back and I wanted to air them down to the exact pressure on each side. Stop at Wendy's for dinner and finally hit the road and head back to work to pick up Ricks car. Get to the car around 10:45, load it up and talk to the wifes for about 5 minutes and head back to my place around 11:30. I take the long road home because the short way is much more hilly & MANY more curves and we don't get back till around 1AM and we finally turn in around 1:30AM

7:15AM and I wake Rick up and go down stairs to get ready for the long day ahead of us and look outside to see it has started raining ... things just where not going my way. We go out and grab a quick bite/coffee at Sheetz and get back around 8AM. I check the weather channel and decide it best to plan for the worst and start clearing the garage. We finally pull the car into the garage around 9:45AM.



Now, I helped DanG on many engine pulls and know what I am doing. I manged to pull the SVT engine from the rolled Contour in 5 hours taking my time and going slow ... installing the 3L/trans took only 4 hours. I manage to pull this same 3L/trans from the rolled Contour in about 5 hours as well. So, I figured this should be a cake walk ... 5 hours out, 4-5 hours in and Rick will be home in time to tuck in the kids. NOT!

2.5L wasn't sitting on the floor till nearly 10 PM! We wasted nearly 3 hours trying to get the damn LCA separated from knuckle assembly. I don't think Rick has heard as much cursing in his entire life as he did that day ... I take that back ... I think he heard more on Sunday. Saturday ended for us around 1:30AM Sunday morning with the 3L in the car, but nothing else done ... simply guided in, seated and engine/trans mounts bolted down.

Sunday was better, but still didn't start the car until nearly 5 PM ... we started around 9AM after a trip to Sheetz for breakfast. Seems like anything that could have been a trouble spot was, except for the y-pipe oddly enough! I pulled a bone headed move on the radiator install that wasted a good 30 minutes ... forgot to feed in the fan shroud FIRST, strap it to the engine and THEN install the radiator ... radiator went in first and we somehow managed to squeeze the shroud in from the intake side of the engine. I think I was starting to loose it from pure exhaustion and just had a brain fart!

10hr job MAX took us roughly 16 hours!

End result was worth it though ... please excuse the abrupt ending of the video ... the camera was full at this point and it actually stopped itself from recording due to being full.

3L Acceleration Run (Right Click ... Save File As)

[fastcougar]

Removed to adhere to forum rules

[Ares]

looks like it was all well worth it

[Pudmunkie]

Very sweet!
Good to see CEG people devoted enough to even pull that off in a weekend with that much **** going on.

btw, I recommend changing the vid, or at least the description before one of the mods see it ;p

[SVT3391]

Well, the car definitely has its own will!

First, she decided to have the water pump toasted exactly at the time FastCougar (Trevor) looked at her. We interpreted that as she really wanted the nice upgrade. However, at the time to take the engine/trans out, she resisted as much as it could ever be. After the swap was finished, she started right up at first crank and then performed so beautifully. Almost like a lady decided to do some major cosmetic surgery and tried to back out already strapped on the surgery table. But when everything is said and done, couldn't be happier with the end result.

Trevor was such a wonderful host that not only took me in for two nights (and I definitely need to thank his lovely wife for allowing me, a stranger that just met for the first time, stay in their beautiful house with plush bed and very nice decorations) but also let me borrow his t-shirt and blue jeans. I was just off work and was in business casual when I met him. Nobody had the most remote idea that the water pump would fail at that moment to push us to the swap over the weekend. Although I would prefer to have scheduled everything before hand and have better arrangement (guess how it went when I called home and told my wife that I would not be able to come home that night around 9:00 pm), the outcome was very good. It definitely beats having the WP fail during my 65 miles driving home. So when I jokingly ask Trevor if he was cursed with Contours, he responded very seriously that he was actually blessed with Contours. I think he is right to be able to come out of a rolled car in one piece without any major scratch at all, and he was able to be in the right place at the right time to prevent my SVT for any further damange due to over heating. And don't worry about the cursing Trev, cause the first minute I got in the shower I had my ears washed really good!

The end result? I am really pleased with the performance. We even got a new pair of CV axles in so my entire drive train is now new. I believe I can get some good mileage out of it. Oh, I truely believe that Trev's screen name is so wrong. Yes he drove fast but 'crazy' is more like it. He drove to over 110 mph on a winding 2 lane country road on the first time the car started, leaving the passenger (guess who ) screaming while taking the video. With the windows down no less! I said he should call himself CrazyFastCougar.

And the lesson learned? hmmm, I found I am not a mechanic material. OK, cross that. We learned that we need to be extremely organized with tools as soon as we are placing it down. We probably have wasted one good hour trying to find the right tool we just used like 3 minutes ago.

Thumps high up for Trev. He built a very nice 3L setup to begin with. And thanks to his rolling of the car and the back out of a previous buyer, now the setup found a nice home in my car which, with no doubt, will stay with me for a long long long time. He is also very pleased to work with, flexible with terms and helpful. And I remember in NECO he responded to a question that the last thing he would do is to have another 2.5L engine. Look now he has a very clean 2.5 SVT engine sitting in his garage waiting to be dismantled or upgraded to another 3L. He also took care of the guy who bought my transmission + SVT clutch without even seeing it (here that's you, Alex! A very big thank you too!). All in all, a very pleased and unique experience!

[fastcougar]

The end result? I am really pleased with the performance. We even got a new pair of CV axles in so my entire drive train is now new. I believe I can get some good mileage out of it. Oh, I truely believe that Trev's screen name is so wrong. Yes he drove fast but 'crazy' is more like it. He drove to over 110 mph on a winding 2 lane country road on the first time the car started, leaving the passenger (guess who ) screaming while taking the video. With the windows down no less! I said he should call himself CrazyFastCougar.

1) I live in the country and that's the "highway"

2) You must remember wrong ... I was doing the speed limit

[todras]

So how are you going to know if there was heat damage with out disassembling the engine. I think I would have thrown a WP first to see how it was. Good story!

[fastcougar]

There was no pinging ... it happened while we where sitting and idling. I forgot to mention that we waited 15 minutes for the car to cool, got back in and drove about 1/2 mile around my office complex and watched it climb again just to make sure it wasn't some fluke with the thermostat sticking closed. Car drove fine (i.e. no pinging), but temp climbed fast with no water pump (impeller cracked in half).

[fordrule]

trevor ur the man . good job

[Jeb Hoge]

Man, what a story. My wife would be SPITTING NAILS if I called home and said "Hey, honey?...there's a little problem..."

:-)