Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Zetec Maintenance Head Swap

OK I dont wanna talk about what happened.. but i just got a used head from a junkyard and my question is this.. Will i have to lift my engine to get my head off? If you know how to do it without bringing up.. Lemme know which way i should go about it

It shouldn't be any trouble to take the head off while leaving the engine in place. One thing you have to do is remove some brackets that attach the head to the passenger side engine mount (the one that sits above the block instead of below it). This requires temporarily loosening the mount, which requires supporting the engine from below with a jack or a stack of bricks or something.

To work on the head, you will probably need a set of large Torx tips for your socket wrench. Plus deep hex sockets in sizes like 15 and 19 mm.

What we did on my car was leave all the hoses and crap attached to the intake manifold, and hang it from the back wall with a piece of wire to keep it just far enough out of the way. The exhaust manifold has to come out... soak all the bolts with penetrating oil well ahead of time and, with luck, everything will come apart cleanly.

At some point we had to back out one or two of the exhaust manifold studs... this requires an external torx socket, unless you just want to brutalize it with a vise-grip.