Rebuilding My 3.8L Super Charged Engine

Well, after a trip to Edmonton for a SCCoWC meet I have started to finally work on my Thunderbird. Today (5/13/03) I started to disassemble the all the accessories that have to be taken off the engine in order for it to be pulled out. This includes all the accessories and brackets, radiator, fan, coolant and windshield washer tanks, supercharger, intercooler and tubes, and intake system.

In order to do almost any type of repair on these cars will require you to remove the cowling right below the windshield. In order to take the engine out, the wiper motor must also be taken out. This will free up alot of room. Some specialty tools are needed such as fuel line disconnects, and a couple bigger sockets. I did this all without the use of air tools... although looking back, I almost wish I had them to speed the process up a bit. If you're doing this, take your time and document your progress as much as you can.

When taking the EGR valve off of the intake plenum, you have to take two bolts out of the EGR valve prior to taking the plenum off. The only way I found to do this, was to use a 3/8" ratchet (which barely fits) and carefully take out the bolts. The bolts come out towards the rear of the car. Be careful as there is not alot of room.

While taking off the miscellaneous parts, I noticed that the cover for the balancer was missing. In fact, the bottom is still there (although you can't see it in the picture) and upon looking into it further, the bottom cover is wrecked because it was rubbing on the crankshaft pulley while the engine was running.

To gain the most room, I took out the radiator, fan, and intercooler. Doing this will also allow me to take and clean everything thoroughly and possibly polish the intercooler. You can also see one of the air conditioning lines that has been disconnected, as having it out of the way will make it less likely to get caught up when I pull the engine.

While the radiator is out I will take and flush it out, straighten as many fins as I can, and paint it with a high temp paint. The intercooler bellow will receive a good cleaning and possibly a coat of black dye to bring it back to life.

When taking out the alternator, I recommend you use caution when taking out the positive (+) bolt. I broke the bolt (yes, it snapped in half and the other half is still in the alternator). I will have to take the alternator in to have it removed. You can see the difference in the broken on the left and what it should look like on the right.

The passenger side motor mount is completely ka-put! It is sitting on the metal and you can see that the rubber is worn out completely, as well the oil filter is sitting on the subframe. The drivers side motor mount looks fine, but both mounts will be replaced with solid rubber ones from MN12 Performance

Now, for some reason Ford decided to put two different brackets on the power steering pump as well as bolting it to those brackets from behind the pulley. In order to get to the nut behind the pulley you have to remove the pulley, remove the bracket that connects to the water pump, and then take off the nut. Before taking off the nut I recommend that you unbolt the power steering pump and tie it out of the way (unless you're going to rebuild it).

The fuel tubing going between the two sides of the fuel rail has gotten brittle and cracked here. It is the only location it has happened and will be replaced.

This is the pile of parts that came out in my first day of goofing around with the motor. It includes all of the accesssories, intake, supercharger, intercooler and tubes, coolant and windshield washer tanks, etc.

This is how the motor looked when I closed up for the night. I will finish pulling all the extra stuff and be ready to pull the motor at the end of tomorrow.

You'd be surprised how comfortable sitting on the radiator support is after wreching for a couple hours. Also...it's amazing how much grease and crap had built up in the engine compartment over time.

Out it goes... after alot of scraped knuckles. I don't know how many times I had to crawl underneath the car to make sure that everything was clear in order to be able to pull the engine. I still can't believe that I got the entire engine out on my own.

Now....after a full day's scrubbing and getting basically totally soaked, the engine compartment was now clean again. It helped that I had a pressure washer (thank you Brent) attached to the hot water tank to degrease everything!

We took the motor down to my dad's garage to be disassembled and inspected. We found that the #5 connecting rod bearing had spun. Damn those things are sharp, be careful when handling them (Dad, how's the finger?). It was decided to get a remanufactured long block assembly from Ford and use that, as it was cheaper that trying to build up and polish the crank and rebuild the motor.

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