• Welcome to the Contour Enthusiasts Group, the best resource for the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique.

    You can register to join the community.

Weird?

I feel like I'm having an oil pressure problem. Again I started up the car and the oil light was on for 1-2 seconds. The RPMs were very low around 500-1000 on startup. Before I could even turn it off the oil light shut off and the RPMs went up to around 2400 which is where they are normally at the second it starts up. What's going on with this engine?

Edit: Went outside and just started cranking the engine. The oil light remained on the entire time I was cranking it. In the past it turned off when it was cranked. The car is parked and will not be started until I figure out what's going on with it.

I'm going to be pulling the oil pan tonight to see if anything might be caught in the oil pickup screen.
 
Last edited:
well whether you have access to a welder or not , the way i did it was i welded a nut to the bushing and threaded a long bolt in and when the bolt bottomed out on the crank it pushed out the bearing , another way ive heard is to tap the bushing and push it out with a bolt
 
Kill Me

Kill Me

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves....
poop003.jpg

poop006.jpg

I need help...these bearings have 134 miles on them and they look like they have 200,000. The crank is in good condition. There are no large gashes of any type and no discoloration. The engine made absolutely no abnormal noises prior to me pulling these off. I hope I caught it early enough to avoid damage to the crank. The surface is relatively smooth and not any different from when the bearings were installed originally. Also, the oil that came out was very very dark for having 134 miles on it and also was as viscous as water. I've never felt oil like this before even after 3,000 mile oil changes.
 
Last edited:
Damn man I cant believe all of the trouble you are having. I hate to ask this but is there a point at which you are just going to scrap it? Man you have really good patience with your car. Keep at it!
 
Yeah, there's a breaking point, and I'm getting close to it. I don't see how in the hell these can get this bad this quick. There was black crap almost like black fuzzy **** in the pickup tube that covered almost everything. The metal shavings were on top of this black stuff so the black crap got there first. This might have caused my oil pressure to drop so much that it did this to the bearings. I don't know for sure and I'm hoping someone smarter than me will chime in and help.
 
Well, the more I read the more I'm thinking this engine is done for. One of the bearings did spin freely in the rod cap. That means that I did indeed spin 1 bearing. The oil light wasn't always on during start up just for 1 day. The car saw 2 miles during that time in question. But as we all know that 1 second and 1 foot can be enough to completely destroy an engine. The crank does appear to be in good shape, when rubbing my fingernail across the crank perpendicular to where the bearing sits you can feel VERY tiny streaking marks. They are not at all visible to the eye. I think that the bearings are just way too mangled to be have left the crank in working condition. This is the end of the line. I will not replace the crank. If this can be fixed by replacing the bearings then I will do so, but if it's going to require replacing the crank, there is going to be a massive part out on the way.
 
Last edited:
My guess is that you got something into the oil galleys while the engine was apart. It got loose and plugged a passage for a while and the damage was done while you had no pressure.

I feel for you. On this project if it were not for bad luck you would have no luck at all. Are you related to Murphy?
 
Well with the cam caps I can kick myself for that because that was a stupid mistake but this is different. The rod bearings were installed correctly and this is something that happened as a result of something out of my control, well not completely out of my control, but something that I couldn't test for like the camshaft. Jim, if the oil passage was blocked once, if I reinstalled new bearings could it happen again? I know that question is damn near impossible to answer but I'm not running on much hope right now. My dad is bringing home something he called "blue" tomorrow. They use it at Ford to test for even hairline cracks in tranny casings and such. I'm going to test the crank and if it turns out ok I guess I'll buy new bearings and give her one last go. I don't want to quit until she dies on me and won't go any more. I've put my heart and soul into this car for the past 3 years and if this doesn't work out I'll likely have the biggest part out I've seen in the 2 years I've been a member of this board. It's going to break my heart but I cannot afford to keep on dumping money into something that may not work in the end. I'm hoping that Tom has some ingenius idea or something of the sort like he's had about the rest of my 3L conflict and he'll come and say that I just need to replace the bearings and everything will be ok but from the looks of those bad boys, this baby is done for.
 
Last edited:
Well before I give up on it I decided to give it one last go around. Ordered new rod bearings and bolts today. I also ordered a new oil pickup, I'm not even going to bother trying to clean that. I'm going to run a couple tests on the crank tonight to determine its overall condition. Assuming it passes I'm going to install the new rod bearings and rod bolts. I also ordered an oil pressure guage and when I start it up I'll keep a close eye on the guage. It will take a couple miles before I can determine if the crank was really destroyed and I think that I should be able to tell by monitoring the oil pressure. I know this is unlikely to work, but I'm not ready to give up yet. Am I wasting my time?
 
Update: I did some tests on the crank. There does not appear to be any cracks in the crank. But, there is scoring, it is extremely small but still there none the less. The course of action still remains unchanged. I'm going to test it in it's current state and monitor oil pressure the entire time. After the bearings fail, which is a good probability I'll be re-pulling the engine. At this point I'm going to take the block to a local machine shop and see if the crank is salvagable. If it is, I'll have them grind the crank down and replace bearings with oversized ones and reinstall. If they deem the crank to be in a condition where it is impossible to fix I found a 2004 escape short block for sale local to me for cheap. I will be purchasing this if my first course of action doesn't pan out. I will have this block inspected by the machine shop to help ensure this works. They will also be installing the new bearings. I will reinstall the engine after this and hopefully be on my merry way.
 
As long as you can clear all the contamination from the oil system you will probably be OK. You really should polish out any scratches as much as you can though. It is even more likely to be OK if you can remove as much of any roughness as you can. Use very fine crocus cloth and a shoelace to polish it.
 
Do you think an emery cloth will do enough to polish the bearing surfaces? These scratches are SMALL, they are really not even visible by eye and can barely be felt when rubbing cross ways by hand. Only when you hit it with your fingernail can you feel it. I'm going to polish these down as well as I can before I even think about putting the bearings back in. I really don't want to pull the engine again.
 
Here's a little picture reference for you guys. They look worse in the pictures than they do in person because the flash just makes it look horrible.
bearing002.jpg

bearing001.jpg
 
Yeah it was hard to get a good picture under there. Anyway, I'll polish them down to the best of my ability today per Jim's instructions. I'm pretty sure I know when the bearing spun. It was on start up when I was pulling the car into the garage. It sounded like a small metal on metal sound but before I even tried to listen to it, it was in the garage and off. Only time will tell, I get the parts today but I'll probably spend most of my time today polishing. I get the oil pressure guage tomorrow and I'm not going to attempt to start up without the guage.
 
Did you pull the connector on the coil pack and turn it over a few times on initial start up? Need to build up pressure on a dry engine.
 
FYI the black crap you were referring to that clogged your pickup is gasket sealant used when assembling the engine covers. If you put a ton of that crap on it may have clogged the pickup and caused your issue.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top