What a pain! Called my neighbor, told him it would only take an hour, just lower it, line it up, and bolt it down. Right. Sure. Easy.

What the hell was I thinking? Darn thing turned out to be my worst nightmare! 1st thing was I had to remove the motor mounts from the engine. That helped it slide toward the transmission. Almost punctured the oil filter, though, cause I pre-pressurized the oiling sysem before I put the engine in the truck. Okay, I past the chassis motor mounts, all I've got to do is line this sucker up with the dowel pins and I'm home free.

Those dowel pins suck! They're not like a Chevy. There's so much clearance on the Chevy pins that you can line it up and it slides right in. On the 4.6L engine the dowels are like - can you say press fit? You have to get both the transmission and the engine perfectly aligned on the dowels, AND then you have to put the transmission bell housing bolts in and start cranking on them to mate the block to the transmission. What a pain! Took me six and a half hours. Oh, one more thing. The four studs protruding from the torque converter have to exactly align with the flexplate as you are lining every thing up. I'm not bashing Fords here guys, but on a Chevy, you don't have this problem, there are bolt holes in the torque converter so that you can put the engine/transmission together and then line up the flexplate to the torque converter.

But, the good thing is.. the engine is in. Now I've got to do everything else to bring it back to life.

 

"then you have to put the transmission bell housing bolts in and start cranking on them to mate the block to the transmission."

I've always heard thats a big no-no, just FYI.

Also, it sounds like you have worked with the Chevy engines quite a bit, whereas this was your first time working with the Ford...the next time you drop one in I bet it wont take you as long.

 

I agree - should be a big "no no". But, as I remember taking this brute out, I had to tug and tug to get this sucker separated from the tranny. I didn't think much about it at the time, but now it gives me pause to ponder the subject. The crate motor came with new locating pins (bushings), so I removed one of the old ones that was still stuck in the transmission. We had to use vice grips to get it out.

As long as I can crank the engine over by hand and I don't hear anything scraping -- It should be okay. We'll see.