A Marriage

As promised and I’m sure as anticipated, at least by me, we started working on the engine this weekend in preparation to install it next week. Here are some pics of the engine with the plastic pulled off and it still sitting on it’s shipping pallet. In case you’re wondering, all the blue tape is sealing off all the openings to keep whatever miscellaneous junk might be floating around out of the engine. It’s a Ford Coyote 5.0 Liter all Aluminum Twin Overhead Cam V8. It produces 412 horsepower and 390 foot pounds of torque. This is the same engine that’s in the current 5.0 liter Mustang. The nice thing is that there are plenty of aftermarket upgrades that can get even more horsepower out of this engine without opening it up. For now though I think 400+ should be enough to get things moving.

First thing I had to do was install the alternator. In the pic below you can see the curved area right above the oil filter with the 2 bolt holes on each end where it’s going to go.

Now in the second pic you can see the alternator installed with a new idler pulley (the black one), a new tensioner pulley (the silver one) and the serpentine belt.

Next thing was to raise the engine off the shipping pallet and the temp engine stand. I then had to modify the stand to fit directly under the engine hoist without the pallet and also to support the engine with the new oil pan. At the top of the pic you can see the engine hanging from an engine leveler, the red bar. This helps adjust the angle of the engine as it hangs from the hoist, this will become important when we lower it into the car.

With the stand modified and the new oil pan on the next step was to start prepping the flywheel, clutch, pressure plate and bell-housing. Below you can see the backing plate installed behind the flywheel. We had to remove the flywheel to install the plate behind it. The plate bolts to the bell-housing and creates containment for the clutch in the event of a catastrophic clutch failure.  I chose a race certified bell-housing for an extra measure of safety considering that my knees will be about 10-12 inches from the clutch.

Next we had to install the bell-housing and check the runout from the flywheel to the center bore of the bell-housing. The center bore of the bell-housing is what locates the transmission and centers it’s input shaft. Too much runout means the center of the flywheel is not lined up with the center of the transmission and can lead to excessive wear and early failure of the transmission. We check it by mounting a dial indicator on the flywheel and then rotating the engine one full turn to measure the runout. The measurement is made in 1000ths of an inch and the tolerance is .005. I’m in luck and everything checked out. If it hadn’t then we would have had to get offset locating dowel pins that would shift the bell-housing in whatever direction was needed to get everything centered.

Below we’ve removed the bell-housing had have put the clutch in place . You can see the alignment tool sticking out of the center of the clutch, it has the little ring on the end of it. It helps hold the clutch in place during assembly and centers it on the flywheel until you mount the pressure plate.

In case you wondering why I kept saying we, that’s cause Destinée was helping out this weekend. 😉 Below she is attaching the pressure plate to the flywheel. You can also see the new low profile oil pan attached to the bottom of the engine. It says Moroso on the side.

Here is the pressure plate attached and the bell housing ready to go back on. Sticking out of the side of the bell-housing is the clutch fork that engages the fingers in the center of the pressure plate to release the clutch.

Do you Coyote 5.0 Liter take TKO-600 to be your  lawful wedded transmission? Will you transfer all your power through TKO-600 to the rear end, to smoke the tires? Ok you get the point. The bell-housing is in place and now the transmission is ready to be attached.

And there you have it a marriage of engine and tranny. In case you’re wondering, yes the orange dead blow hammer was involved in the marriage….just a little bit.

Looks pretty nice and yes I’m excited. Next week, we will install the pair in the car. Stay tuned.