Hello all! Ive been viewing the forum for a while now but now i have some questions that could not be answered by searcing the forums or google. Ok, my truck is a 97 F150 4x4 offroad 4.6l V8. I picked it up about a month ago for $900, couldnt pass it up. So as i suspected when i bought it, it has a head gasket leak, just gets exhaust in the coolant, however, it also has the passenger rear hg oil leak and it leaks like a sieve. So being that the truck has 210,000 on it, ive decided to rebuild an engine for it. I found and bought a 99 5.4l out of an f250, i did the research on swappi.g to a 5.4l and doesnt seem terrible at all. Heres where my real dillemma is, upon getting it home i started to inspect it and the rust on the outside of the block, its so bad its flaking off around the freeze plugs, and it has bad rust everywhere else, my dillemma is, how bad can the outside be before its unuseable? The engine ran when it was faken out and e erything that is supposed to be bolted to the block still is. Really my question is, should this be able to be blasted off or should i just start looking for a brand new short block? Remember, this is a rebuild project.

 

The metal in an engine block as compared to, say, body metal or frame pieces is so much thicker that I doubt you'd ever lose enough material to rust to make the block unusable. Remember, people haul engines out of fields that have sat for 50+ years and rebuild them.

 

Just clean it up real good and throw some high temp engine paint on it to protect it from further rust.

 

All that rust will come off in a hot tank and your good as new. You'd wanna hot tank it anyway..

 

Thank you all for the replies! I figured it wasnt too big of a problem. However, upon further inspection, i found something that may be a big problem, i noticed that the lower ear that the transmission bolts to on the passenger side of the engine is snapped off, and i dont have it :o Is there anything that can be done about this besides finding a bare block??? I bought this particular engine for the PI heads and the forged crank, i paid $350, i really hope that theres something that can be done, any ideas?

 

Sound like its scrap.

 

What if i can get the piece? Anything that can be done? It would hopefully still be on the trans.

 

There are guys who can weld stuff like that.

 

It would hopefully still be on the trans.

 

You could weld a piece of steel behind the piece that is left intact and weld a stud to that.

 

If you bought the engine for PI heads then you're out of luck. In 99, only F150s and Expedition 5.4's got PI heads. Super Duty's and Econolines stuck with the non PI heads on 5.4s until 01'.

If you just had to use the block, weld it and call it a day. As for the rust, whatever hot tanking doesn't remove, sand blasting will. Any competent machine shop should be more than able to clean that block up back to like new spec.