Any thoughts on prepping a factory Ford 2004 crate motor to fire up? As I mentioned in my first thread I am doing the 4.6 to 5.4 swap in my 1998 Extra cab (thanks JMC for the swap notes).
I'm thinking I should remove the plugs and squirt some oil in the cylinders and spin it with plugs out to lube the cylinders. I kind of hate to remove the factory installed plugs because of all the complaints about blow outs.
Then I was thinking about rigging an external oil pump and pre lubing through the oil pressure switch hole since there is no oil pump drive shaft access through the distributors anymore.
Mike

 

Was it in a climate controlled space? I installed an engine that sat for 6 years in a heated space. You will need to remove the intake manifold if you are doing it through the engine bay so at that time is a good time to change the plugs to the nickle platinum sp-479's and re torque them to 28ft/lbs to avoid a blow out in the future. If you leave the plugs that are in there.. they are most likely torqued to 14ft/lbs with antisieze which is a blow out issue. Also, like I did, I would recommend lubing the cylinders with a squirt of oil first. Then, before start up, trip the inertia switch to the pump and turn it over for about 30 seconds to build a little oil pressure and lube the cylinders. Flip the switch back and fire it up.

On another note, the other concern would be dried out gaskets. I replaced whatever gaskets were easy to do like the water pump, thermostat, upper and lower intake manifold, iac, egr etc... Even though it is "new" I would still invest the $100 and know that you never have to change them in the near future.

 

If the engine is built in 2004 look at the heads. If the head manufacture date is after November of 2002 then you have the 8 thread cylinder heads and won't have to worry about spark plug blow out.

 

You can also pull the crank sensor plug when you put it in and turn her over to oil it(she will not spark).

 

Thanks for the heads up on the spark plug issues. I thought it was due to improper replacement of the plugs and not the factory installation. The engine was built on 5/17/2004 according to all of the factory stickers.
As far as I know the engine was kept in a shop environment here in dry Las Vegas. It turns over well with a breaker bar.
I am replacing the engine harness with my 1998 harness and I had to replace the fuel injector rail and injectors as the 2004 rail had no fuel return line and the injectors were different and would not plug into my harness.
The knock sensor has a different style plug but is still a 2 wire sensor so I hope I can just splice in the connector that matches my harness.
Mike

 

In the old days I would ALWAYS run the oil pump before starting any engine I installed. Used to be able to do that by putting a socket on the oil pump shaft under distributors.. Now the only thing you can do is put a tiny shot of oil in the cylinder and crank the engine with its ability to start disabled and theres a few ways of doing that including just holding the gas pedel to the floor..

 

Is this a 2V or 3V?

 

Can't you just pull the fuel pump fuse and turn it over for 10-20 seconds?

 

sure. that works.

 

It's a 2 valve motor, I was told it was for an 2004 Expedition. I pulled the cab off the truck as I wanted to be able to see up close the exhaust fitment and any issues with the accessory drives as the power steering pump is now mounted high next to the head and the oil filter is at the front of the motor down low.
Mike

 

I would just crank it up. It's gonna take a while to pressurize the lines and get the air out anyway. I pulled a car out of the bush last fall that had been sitting for over 7 years and just cranked it up and ran it on the 7 year old fuel. I then proceeded to drive the absolute bag off that car all the way home which was about 50 miles.