My swap has begun, as I have picked up my new engine today and brought it home. I got an '05 Sable engine with 43K for $315! Totally worth the 500 mile round-trip. It looks too clean to be true! We'll find out on Sunday when I start the complete tear down of both engines next to one another. I'll try to keep all of my relevant costs and parts required updated so that someone else in the future might be able to glean from it. I don't keep track of tools in my costs, even consumables such as cutting wheels, carbide cutters, etc.
My plans are relatively straight forward:
* 3.0L Block & Heads
* SVT Cams, timing chain, timing chain guides, gears, pulse wheel and timing cover.
* Port matched head to SVT IM.
* Mild exhaust side port to remove casting imperfections.
* Retain EGR functionality
* Nix AC
My goal is to do this for under $1,000, and my far costs are: ~$362
$315.00 -- '05 3.0L Motor (Schmidts's auto salvage, Horton, WI)
$012.00 -- Felpro Timing cover gaskets (Autozone Commercial)
$022.00 -- Felpro Intake manifold gaskets (AC)
$006.00 -- Felpro Exhaust manifold gaskets (AC)
$021.00 -- Victor Reinz Silicone valve cover gaskets (AC)
$038.00 -- Bugzuki Plates (PRT)
-$051.00 - Scrap metal recycling**
-------------------------------
Project started on 05/22/2014 and ended on 05/27/14, roughly six days.
Day 1: I prepped the 3.0L motor as best as I could. Stripped off accessories, cams, timing chain plates, ported heads, and cleaned it up decently. With 43K it had very little dirt and oil on it, and most of the red loctite from the factory was still red and cherry! Truly a hell of a good find. No headaches or issues to comment on. As for porting the heads, I have an old school kit with a helical cutter, standing stones and a large variety of sand-paper drums, as well as my Dremel for cleaning up and fine detail work. I use a Craftsman Professional drill, not a die grinder and had to get a 6" drill bit extension to get a better angle when close to the heads. Over all, it probably took me a couple of hours to complete the port work to satisfaction. I've ported and polished a number of heads in the past, and whenever possible I remove the cams from the head then reseal the valve cover. I do it this way so I don't have to risk anything by hoping that the neutral alignment of the current port isn't compromised by a ••••ty HLA that's floating the valve. After the mess of cutting is done, I vacuum out as much as possible, use compressed air to blow out what I can, then use some brakeparts cleaner and quickly spray it down with more compressed air. Not only removes the metal but also cleans up the carbon buildup as well. I ported the heads with ~30 degree decline, it seemed the best given material in all directions. There isn't much room to make for the injector, so you gotta ease it as much as possible - using the dremel sander barrel, it takes a bit of time and patience to create a nice slope. Careful to not dig out the slope too much, else you'll bust through the otherside of the very thin wall there.
Day 2: Pulling the motor and trans went straight forward, though my SVT has gotten a lot of rust in the past couple of years. Using this as my winter vehicle in the UP for only two years has generated several orders of magnitude of oxidization, and two-year-old 'new' suspension components were entirely rusted and seized. PB, torch, and electric impact are necessary tools. I have a terrible time with keeping a steady hand, so filling jugs with liquids is always fail. Lost some of the Royal Purple Syncromax, coolant, and oil. My work floor became a ••••ty, sticky, and nasty mess. I had to keep cleaning it and toss down fresh cardboard to work on. This mess alone cost me a couple pairs of clothing a few hours of time. I can never seem to keep a tidy work area.
Day 3: Tearing down the SVT motor and moving stuff to the 3.0L. Pretty straight forward, ran into the 'typical' stuff I read about for 3.0L swaps and stuff that was not expected. Note to people who are going to follow through with this, BUY a 1/2" (13mm) hex key. You will need this to remove the SVT oil cooler. I ended up lightly tapping in 10pt key used for wheel locks, which gave enough bite to remove it and not too much to distort the tube. The SVT cams were binding, so I tested the cams still in the read head of the SVT motor to feel how smooth that they should be, and figured awe ••••. So I removed the rocker arms to try to install the cams again. Without the rocker arms the first cam was still binding, but I tested the sequence while tightening and found that one of the journals was tight, so I took 2000 grit sand paper to the cam and the cap to clean 'em up, reoiled, reinstalled, and they were butter. Reinstalled the rocker arms and the cams bound up again! Long story short, and a few hours of my life later, the HLAs were hard as a rock and just needed some time to decompress with the new cams installed. One of the HLAs was limp and wouldn't pressurize, so I pulled one from the SVT motor in the exact same spot to replace it with. If the cams feel hard to turn over, just leave it for 15 minutes and come back - they should loosen up. Hopefully my hours of frustration can help you avoid it in the future. I kept the 3.0L timing tensioners since they had 43K miles, v.s. 200K+ on the SVT. The front tensioner was really good, though the rear one was soft. I packed the rear one in oil, opened the lock and pumped it to pressurize it. It got hard pretty quick, so I felt confident that it should work - but was still worried the whole time. Spoiler alert: It did work just fine!
Day four: Fitting the rest of the •••• to motor. Cleaned off valve covers, lower intake (which was a disgusting mess), upper intake (which wasn't much better), cut two tabs on the back of the block to mount the alternator bracket, double checked the timing by cranking the motor over MANY times. Sealed up the motor and poured ~4 quarts of oil in it to check for leaks. Fixed misc. wiring looms, cleaned the engine bay, completely gutted the AC system (yay! Probably 50 lbs lost!), repainted areas which looked terrible and faded, etc. Very slow day, I probably spent 16 hours doing all of this. I've only sleet a few hours each day and worked the rest, so I was in zombie mode and kept loosing tools, forgetting what I was doing, and having to triple check everything to make sure I did it. Loosing my sanity at this point and upset that the swap is taking me this long. I spent a lot of time on Autozone's website looking at notes for diagrams, torque specs, and trying to calm down by getting into arguments on the internet about religion. Yes, religious argument is much less stressful to me than working on the car at this point. I kept the Sable oilpan on, didn't bother to remove or drill it. Seems to hold just fine! No leaks, naturally, etc.
Day five: Putting the motor back in. I spent atleast an hour trying to get the cock sucker of a baffle plate lined up behind the flywheel so that I could install the transaxle. This part always takes me a while. My plate is bend in a few spots, which I cannot work out, so it pops off all of the time when I touch something. I ended up getting REALLY long bolts to go between the transaxle and motor so that I could rough fit and slide it together. Putting the transaxle back on the motor this time probably cost me four hours of time. Last time, it took me 10 minutes. FML.I just learned that there is supposed to be a mount on the rear head above the alternator, so I threaded a thick bolt into there to mount my chain to - holy crap! The motor went in right! Not nearly as quick and easy as pulling and replacing a KL motor in a Probe, but a huge improvement in time and frustration. Motor went in okay, the driver side mount seems shot - huge amount of slop in it, I really need to buy a new one. I hooked up misc. sensors, electrical, etc. Took me probably six hours to accomplish what should be done in one. Exhausted at this point and emotionally a wreck. I'm supposed to be moving at this point, but the car is taking so long and I'm so paranoid about the car not working. People calling me for this or that, completely ••••ing filthy from the garage.. nothing is going well. ••••'s breaking, ••••'s getting lost, and nearly fell asleep while working on the car.. very unfun unfulfilling day.
Day Six: Y-pipe doesn't want to line up well, gotta twist the •••• out of it to make it fit to the headers. Installed half shafts, added 1qt of Penzoil Synchomesh to replace the missing Royal Purple Synchromax; The shifting feels much nicer now than it did before. Hmm. hell of time finding the right connectors for everything, zip tying random •••• up in the rear above the exhaust manifold - typical stuff. Clutch wouldn't pressurize. I lost the C-clip for the throw out bearing, ended up twisting a thick paper clip into there -- seems to be holding okay. Pedal wouldn't stiffen up, my anxiety grew like crazy then I focused on other stuff. Negative terminal for the battery broke, had to find and use another one. Missing tools all day long, forgetting wtf I'm doing, cannot find the right bolt and/or nut for anything to save my life. End up missing nuts in motor mounts. Crank the motor. Crank the motor. Intake pops violently. Multiple backfires. Barely starts, stalls. Barely starts, idles at 3k on what sounded like 3 cylinders. Motor isn't starting up right, clutch isn't working. hands tense up, my eyes water up, I'm slamming ••••, talking to my self and answering. Realizing that I NEED to move, now, and I have no working car. I'll be homeless an adrift, unable to even put my •••• into storage. Getting sicker and more worried. At this point, I'm caring too much to not give a •••• and keep cranking the motor, over and over. Motor starts up, idles a second then drops. I check for a vacuum leak, tighten the UIM bolts another 8th of a turn or so, but they were rock solid already. Kept cranking, kept answermyself, kept gritting my teeth and loosing my breath. It starts, idles rough as hell then dies. Check engine light appears from that. I keep my foot on the gas lightly, keeping it going for 10 minutes or so. Cannot shift the car, so I put it in reverse and use the starter to move it backwards out of the garage. Try again.. and it starts! vacuum leak for sure, I can hear it hissing. I look around and find the spot for the random yellow tube on the firewall, plug it in then it smoothens out more. I let it run another 10 minutes or so, all by it self and it cleared up. Couldn't use the clutch though, so I hand pumped the pedal as hard so I could, just so i could 'hit' something - then felt it stiffen up. Thought it was in my head, kept pushing it.. then i got my clutch back! Things are looking up, and i think that i can move on in life. Took the car for a test ride around the block and got worried. The engine felt too strong, like the timing was hella advanced and barely any gas sent it up to 20mph in a moment. Got giddy, but still felt worried as all hell. Got home, patched up a bunch of coolant leaks, and took it down the read. up to 3000 PM it felt good. Really good, firm, good throttle response (which I never had), torque (that I never had) but at 3000 RPM it sounded like a really pissed off bee - grinding like crazy, on or off load. Ended up only being the idler bearing (that I replaced a month ago), so I'll replace that in the morning.
All in all, my old motor was worn out. Reliable but worn.
3.0L Resolved:
* New motor, less wear so better performance.
* Removed excessive carbon build up in the UIM and LIM.
* Removed casting imperfections from the UIM.
* Fixed* oil-leak, where old pan kept leaking oil on the exhaust out the drain plug hole.
* Fixed* oil-leak, valve cover gaskets
* Fixed vacuum leaks, air/oil separator no longer exists, PCV is routed from rear head to TB. Used tubes from 3.0L and it looks stock.
* Fixed multiple exhaust leaks, SVT head had a broken stud and the gaskets were able to be torqued to spec this time. Originally they were installed with the motor in.
* Fixed stalling problem, related to vacuum leaks most likely.
* Ruled out the rest of my vibrations and noise, to the driver motor mount.
* Removed dead AC, completely.
All in all, it would have been too much hassle to simply fix the many issues that I had. Better to spend a little more to completely fix those and others just starting. IMHO the money alone was worth it just to fix all of the bull••••, but to add the extra power and lower miles to the equation.. wow. Hella worth it. I havent' driven the car to reline yet, the idler bearing is way too loud and I don't want it drowning out another critical noise that might also spring up. Partial throttle though, this a much more powerful setup for sure. I'm very happy that i moved the important SVT stuff over and will later this summer upgrade the throttle body, MAF, weld in a bung for the front secondary o2 sensor (Damn front header didn't have a second bung for that), and get a proper dynotune to post up my results to here. Now I feel like I can move in confidence and have a little pride in my ride.
Thank you VERY kindly to everyone offering help, support, and comments through out my many threads. You've been a great help to me and I greatly appreciate all of you for that. Now it's time for me to catch up on lost sleep and sanity!
** I'll udpate this thread again soon here to upload my pictures, keep posted!
My plans are relatively straight forward:
* 3.0L Block & Heads
* SVT Cams, timing chain, timing chain guides, gears, pulse wheel and timing cover.
* Port matched head to SVT IM.
* Mild exhaust side port to remove casting imperfections.
* Retain EGR functionality
* Nix AC
My goal is to do this for under $1,000, and my far costs are: ~$362
$315.00 -- '05 3.0L Motor (Schmidts's auto salvage, Horton, WI)
$012.00 -- Felpro Timing cover gaskets (Autozone Commercial)
$022.00 -- Felpro Intake manifold gaskets (AC)
$006.00 -- Felpro Exhaust manifold gaskets (AC)
$021.00 -- Victor Reinz Silicone valve cover gaskets (AC)
$038.00 -- Bugzuki Plates (PRT)
-$051.00 - Scrap metal recycling**
-------------------------------
Project started on 05/22/2014 and ended on 05/27/14, roughly six days.
Day 1: I prepped the 3.0L motor as best as I could. Stripped off accessories, cams, timing chain plates, ported heads, and cleaned it up decently. With 43K it had very little dirt and oil on it, and most of the red loctite from the factory was still red and cherry! Truly a hell of a good find. No headaches or issues to comment on. As for porting the heads, I have an old school kit with a helical cutter, standing stones and a large variety of sand-paper drums, as well as my Dremel for cleaning up and fine detail work. I use a Craftsman Professional drill, not a die grinder and had to get a 6" drill bit extension to get a better angle when close to the heads. Over all, it probably took me a couple of hours to complete the port work to satisfaction. I've ported and polished a number of heads in the past, and whenever possible I remove the cams from the head then reseal the valve cover. I do it this way so I don't have to risk anything by hoping that the neutral alignment of the current port isn't compromised by a ••••ty HLA that's floating the valve. After the mess of cutting is done, I vacuum out as much as possible, use compressed air to blow out what I can, then use some brakeparts cleaner and quickly spray it down with more compressed air. Not only removes the metal but also cleans up the carbon buildup as well. I ported the heads with ~30 degree decline, it seemed the best given material in all directions. There isn't much room to make for the injector, so you gotta ease it as much as possible - using the dremel sander barrel, it takes a bit of time and patience to create a nice slope. Careful to not dig out the slope too much, else you'll bust through the otherside of the very thin wall there.
Day 2: Pulling the motor and trans went straight forward, though my SVT has gotten a lot of rust in the past couple of years. Using this as my winter vehicle in the UP for only two years has generated several orders of magnitude of oxidization, and two-year-old 'new' suspension components were entirely rusted and seized. PB, torch, and electric impact are necessary tools. I have a terrible time with keeping a steady hand, so filling jugs with liquids is always fail. Lost some of the Royal Purple Syncromax, coolant, and oil. My work floor became a ••••ty, sticky, and nasty mess. I had to keep cleaning it and toss down fresh cardboard to work on. This mess alone cost me a couple pairs of clothing a few hours of time. I can never seem to keep a tidy work area.
Day 3: Tearing down the SVT motor and moving stuff to the 3.0L. Pretty straight forward, ran into the 'typical' stuff I read about for 3.0L swaps and stuff that was not expected. Note to people who are going to follow through with this, BUY a 1/2" (13mm) hex key. You will need this to remove the SVT oil cooler. I ended up lightly tapping in 10pt key used for wheel locks, which gave enough bite to remove it and not too much to distort the tube. The SVT cams were binding, so I tested the cams still in the read head of the SVT motor to feel how smooth that they should be, and figured awe ••••. So I removed the rocker arms to try to install the cams again. Without the rocker arms the first cam was still binding, but I tested the sequence while tightening and found that one of the journals was tight, so I took 2000 grit sand paper to the cam and the cap to clean 'em up, reoiled, reinstalled, and they were butter. Reinstalled the rocker arms and the cams bound up again! Long story short, and a few hours of my life later, the HLAs were hard as a rock and just needed some time to decompress with the new cams installed. One of the HLAs was limp and wouldn't pressurize, so I pulled one from the SVT motor in the exact same spot to replace it with. If the cams feel hard to turn over, just leave it for 15 minutes and come back - they should loosen up. Hopefully my hours of frustration can help you avoid it in the future. I kept the 3.0L timing tensioners since they had 43K miles, v.s. 200K+ on the SVT. The front tensioner was really good, though the rear one was soft. I packed the rear one in oil, opened the lock and pumped it to pressurize it. It got hard pretty quick, so I felt confident that it should work - but was still worried the whole time. Spoiler alert: It did work just fine!
Day four: Fitting the rest of the •••• to motor. Cleaned off valve covers, lower intake (which was a disgusting mess), upper intake (which wasn't much better), cut two tabs on the back of the block to mount the alternator bracket, double checked the timing by cranking the motor over MANY times. Sealed up the motor and poured ~4 quarts of oil in it to check for leaks. Fixed misc. wiring looms, cleaned the engine bay, completely gutted the AC system (yay! Probably 50 lbs lost!), repainted areas which looked terrible and faded, etc. Very slow day, I probably spent 16 hours doing all of this. I've only sleet a few hours each day and worked the rest, so I was in zombie mode and kept loosing tools, forgetting what I was doing, and having to triple check everything to make sure I did it. Loosing my sanity at this point and upset that the swap is taking me this long. I spent a lot of time on Autozone's website looking at notes for diagrams, torque specs, and trying to calm down by getting into arguments on the internet about religion. Yes, religious argument is much less stressful to me than working on the car at this point. I kept the Sable oilpan on, didn't bother to remove or drill it. Seems to hold just fine! No leaks, naturally, etc.
Day five: Putting the motor back in. I spent atleast an hour trying to get the cock sucker of a baffle plate lined up behind the flywheel so that I could install the transaxle. This part always takes me a while. My plate is bend in a few spots, which I cannot work out, so it pops off all of the time when I touch something. I ended up getting REALLY long bolts to go between the transaxle and motor so that I could rough fit and slide it together. Putting the transaxle back on the motor this time probably cost me four hours of time. Last time, it took me 10 minutes. FML.I just learned that there is supposed to be a mount on the rear head above the alternator, so I threaded a thick bolt into there to mount my chain to - holy crap! The motor went in right! Not nearly as quick and easy as pulling and replacing a KL motor in a Probe, but a huge improvement in time and frustration. Motor went in okay, the driver side mount seems shot - huge amount of slop in it, I really need to buy a new one. I hooked up misc. sensors, electrical, etc. Took me probably six hours to accomplish what should be done in one. Exhausted at this point and emotionally a wreck. I'm supposed to be moving at this point, but the car is taking so long and I'm so paranoid about the car not working. People calling me for this or that, completely ••••ing filthy from the garage.. nothing is going well. ••••'s breaking, ••••'s getting lost, and nearly fell asleep while working on the car.. very unfun unfulfilling day.
Day Six: Y-pipe doesn't want to line up well, gotta twist the •••• out of it to make it fit to the headers. Installed half shafts, added 1qt of Penzoil Synchomesh to replace the missing Royal Purple Synchromax; The shifting feels much nicer now than it did before. Hmm. hell of time finding the right connectors for everything, zip tying random •••• up in the rear above the exhaust manifold - typical stuff. Clutch wouldn't pressurize. I lost the C-clip for the throw out bearing, ended up twisting a thick paper clip into there -- seems to be holding okay. Pedal wouldn't stiffen up, my anxiety grew like crazy then I focused on other stuff. Negative terminal for the battery broke, had to find and use another one. Missing tools all day long, forgetting wtf I'm doing, cannot find the right bolt and/or nut for anything to save my life. End up missing nuts in motor mounts. Crank the motor. Crank the motor. Intake pops violently. Multiple backfires. Barely starts, stalls. Barely starts, idles at 3k on what sounded like 3 cylinders. Motor isn't starting up right, clutch isn't working. hands tense up, my eyes water up, I'm slamming ••••, talking to my self and answering. Realizing that I NEED to move, now, and I have no working car. I'll be homeless an adrift, unable to even put my •••• into storage. Getting sicker and more worried. At this point, I'm caring too much to not give a •••• and keep cranking the motor, over and over. Motor starts up, idles a second then drops. I check for a vacuum leak, tighten the UIM bolts another 8th of a turn or so, but they were rock solid already. Kept cranking, kept answermyself, kept gritting my teeth and loosing my breath. It starts, idles rough as hell then dies. Check engine light appears from that. I keep my foot on the gas lightly, keeping it going for 10 minutes or so. Cannot shift the car, so I put it in reverse and use the starter to move it backwards out of the garage. Try again.. and it starts! vacuum leak for sure, I can hear it hissing. I look around and find the spot for the random yellow tube on the firewall, plug it in then it smoothens out more. I let it run another 10 minutes or so, all by it self and it cleared up. Couldn't use the clutch though, so I hand pumped the pedal as hard so I could, just so i could 'hit' something - then felt it stiffen up. Thought it was in my head, kept pushing it.. then i got my clutch back! Things are looking up, and i think that i can move on in life. Took the car for a test ride around the block and got worried. The engine felt too strong, like the timing was hella advanced and barely any gas sent it up to 20mph in a moment. Got giddy, but still felt worried as all hell. Got home, patched up a bunch of coolant leaks, and took it down the read. up to 3000 PM it felt good. Really good, firm, good throttle response (which I never had), torque (that I never had) but at 3000 RPM it sounded like a really pissed off bee - grinding like crazy, on or off load. Ended up only being the idler bearing (that I replaced a month ago), so I'll replace that in the morning.
All in all, my old motor was worn out. Reliable but worn.
3.0L Resolved:
* New motor, less wear so better performance.
* Removed excessive carbon build up in the UIM and LIM.
* Removed casting imperfections from the UIM.
* Fixed* oil-leak, where old pan kept leaking oil on the exhaust out the drain plug hole.
* Fixed* oil-leak, valve cover gaskets
* Fixed vacuum leaks, air/oil separator no longer exists, PCV is routed from rear head to TB. Used tubes from 3.0L and it looks stock.
* Fixed multiple exhaust leaks, SVT head had a broken stud and the gaskets were able to be torqued to spec this time. Originally they were installed with the motor in.
* Fixed stalling problem, related to vacuum leaks most likely.
* Ruled out the rest of my vibrations and noise, to the driver motor mount.
* Removed dead AC, completely.
All in all, it would have been too much hassle to simply fix the many issues that I had. Better to spend a little more to completely fix those and others just starting. IMHO the money alone was worth it just to fix all of the bull••••, but to add the extra power and lower miles to the equation.. wow. Hella worth it. I havent' driven the car to reline yet, the idler bearing is way too loud and I don't want it drowning out another critical noise that might also spring up. Partial throttle though, this a much more powerful setup for sure. I'm very happy that i moved the important SVT stuff over and will later this summer upgrade the throttle body, MAF, weld in a bung for the front secondary o2 sensor (Damn front header didn't have a second bung for that), and get a proper dynotune to post up my results to here. Now I feel like I can move in confidence and have a little pride in my ride.
Thank you VERY kindly to everyone offering help, support, and comments through out my many threads. You've been a great help to me and I greatly appreciate all of you for that. Now it's time for me to catch up on lost sleep and sanity!
** I'll udpate this thread again soon here to upload my pictures, keep posted!
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