Project Break a Boss

I just want to say that this will probably be a slow teardown and build as I work on the weekends as well and have maybe an hour a day to devote to tearing this down, plus I have to wait to gather funds for the build since this happened at an inopportune time (not that there is ever a great time for your engine to decide to devour its self).

Well, it seemed as if I had started to develop a tick with my engine. I parked it for a bit to try and figure out what was wrong with it and over the course of a couple of weeks I forgot about it. I couldn’t find the keys to my V6 and started the Boss up and I was quickly reminded of the loud noise emanating from my engine. Anyway, it sounded something like this in case anyone is interested in what prompted this whole process.

http://vid579.photobucket.com/albums/ss233/fordfan7689/20140914_143224_zpsbc3afb89.mp4

Well after that, I parked the car until that weekend and drained the oil. When I did I didn’t notice any metal flakes through the oil so I thought that I was in the clear there. Well, I was wrong. When I was draining the oil from the drain pan I noticed a couple of sparkles coming from the oil and that’s when I noticed everything.







The next step was to take the engine out of the car. It was pretty straight forward, the only real hiccups that I ran into was that I rounded off one of the bolts from the exhaust manifold to the cat so I removed the clamp that connects the cat to the midpipe. The starter motor has a bolt on the very top of it that is a pain to get to from under the car or from the side of it, so what I did was put a couple of extensions together and attacked it from the front of the engine where the A/C condenser was. The biggest problem was actually getting the engine free from the transmission. When it came time to pull the engine it just wouldn’t budge, eventually after a lot of up and down with a jack and the engine hoist I got enough daylight to finally get the very tip of a screwdriver in between the bellhousing and the metal plate and use it somewhat as a wedge to finally break it free. I decided to remove the hood to make it a lot easier to actually pull the engine from the car.

I had the engine in this position for a while until I was finally able to get the away from the transmission.


After about 2 hours of up and down and back and forth and getting the screwdrivers around the bellhousing out it came.





The obligatory (not so) empty engine bay shot




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Parts List

• 2013 GT500 Cooling Fan – Part# M-8C607-MSVT
• Aeroforce Interceptor Single Gauge – Part# CN101
• Aeroforce Black Bezel –Part# AF-BEZEL-BLACK
• Aeroforce Black Boss 302 Gauge Face – Part# AF-LOGO-BOSS302
• Aeroforce 5V regulator kit – Part# AF-SENS010
• BMR K-Member - Part #KM018
• BMR Tubular A-Arms – Part # AA021
• BMR Radiator Support – Part # RS003
• Kooks Long Tube Headers 1 7/8ths – Part# 11412400 Supersedes Part #60-41-188
• McLeod RST Clutch with Lightweight Steel flywheel Package – JPC Racing Part # 1124
• Moroso Race Oil Pan – Part # 20572
• Oil Pan Gasket – Part# BR3Z-6710-A
• Oil Pickup Tube – Part# BR3Z-6622-A
• Oil Pump – Part# BR3Z-6600-A
• Roush Vent Pod – Part# 404470
• TSS Billet Oil Pump Gears – JPC Racing Part # 1760 (It may be the same as TSS’s but I couldn’t find a part number on their website)

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Now that the engine was out of the car it was time to bolt it up to the stand. I removed the flywheel, clutch assembly, and pulse ring so that I can bolt it to the engine stand. Upon doing so, I noticed that it looks like I didn’t have the revised o-ring around the crankshaft position sensor like I was told since it appears I have the stock orange o-ring. At least this confirmed my suspicions about possibly having a bad crankshaft position sensor after I performed a quick test.



As a quick aside, I know that for the Boss 302 this should tell you if the CKP is bad or not. I’m not sure if it is the same for the GT’s but I would imagine that it would still hold true. I am 95% sure that this is the way you do this but I will look around a bit more and see if I can’t find the thread and update the post in case I am wrong. Drive the car for about 15 or 20 minutes in 4th gear with the RPM’s between 4,000-4,250 and the check engine should come on and flashing. If this happens, than everytime the solution has been to replace the CKP. This is normally a problem for the 2012’s as they revised and udated the wiring harness for the 2013’s. It seems that the wiring prongs act as tuning forks almost and vibrate themselves to death on a road course in a matter of 15 hours or so.

• Pressure Plate/Clutch Assembly – 9 x 13mm
• Flywheel – 8 x 19mm

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Once I got everything removed I was able to bolt the engine onto the stand and remove the hoist from the garage. From there I pulled the motor mounts off followed by the valve covers to see if there was any carnage in the valvetrain. I couldn’t really find anything outside of some metal shavings on the shaft of the uhhhh camshaft as well as some odd wearing on two of the LH intake cam lobes. Outside of that everything else looks ok by my eyes (ie. No giant chunks of shit missing or gouged).




From there I turned my focus onto the oil pan. I removed the oil pan and separated it from the windage tray (I just grabbed my plastic fastner removal tool and used that to separate the oil pan and windage tray this way I could remove the pan, then unbolt the pickup tube and take off the windage tray). Upon doing so it looked like someone poured silver metallic paint into the oil pan and mixed in a tiny bit of oil in there. After looking at it a bit further, the oil has a bit of a milk shake look to it but maybe I am wrong here so maybe someone more knowledgeable than I can say the oil looks a bit odd like a head gasket leak. So far it has only looked like this when I took off the oil pan so maybe that had something to do with it, but either way I think I can repaint my Vapor Silver V6 with what is in the bottom of the oil pan haha.

• Valve Covers - 14 each side (28 total) x 10mm
• Oil Pan/Windage Tray –16 x 10mm & 3 x 13mm
• Oil pickup tube bolts – 3 x 10mm
• Oil Pickup tube spacer – 1 x 17mm

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From there it was just a matter of taking everything apart to see if I can figure out where all of this metal was coming from. I started by removing as much as I could off of the block before opening up the front cover.

• A/C compressor – 3 x 13mm
• Alternator – 2 x 15mm & 1 nut x 13mm
• Camshaft Position Sensors – 4 x 8mm black=intake; grey=exhaust
• Cowl Ground Strap -1 x 10mm
• Crankshaft Position Sensor – 1 x 8mm
• Crankshaft Pulley Bolt – 1 x 17mm
• Exhaust Manifold nuts – 16 x 15mm
• Exhaust Studs – 16 x 6mm
• Knock Sensors – 2 x 10mm (1 per sensor)
• Idler Pulley – 1 x 13mm
• Tensioner Pulley – 1 x 13mm
• Thermostat Housing -2 x 8mm
• Water Pump Bolts – 4 x 10mm
• Water Pump Pulley Bolts – 4 x 10mm

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Just a little note for the Newbies that haven’t done anything like this before (such as me), if you haven’t taken off a water pump before you can grab a hammer and lightly tap the snout to help loosen it up and you should be able to wrestle it out once you can get it to wiggle a little bit. I folded up a rag a couple of times as not to damage the water pump and gave it a little tappy tap tap like in Happy Gilmore.

I have to give a big thank you to Tad over at Freedom Racing! I went out and bought a 3 jaw puller to remove the crankshaft pulley. Well, I put it together and the bolts weren’t really long enough for the nuts to get a good grab on them so the second I put some pressure on it to remove the pulley, the ****ing thing exploded and I mean exploded. I think I still have an imprint mark on my forehead from one of the projectiles (nuts and bolts and stuff) hitting my head. I think a squirrel that was watching me work got knocked off the rafter of the garage, cursed at me for being cheap and scurried away. Anyway, I sent him a PM Sunday afternoon about getting me a new 3 jaw puller. I got a PM from him shortly after that saying that he would head down to the office and check for me how soon I could get one. Sunday night he PM’d me back and I ordered it and I had it on my doorstep Tuesday Morning. If you need any Ford Specific Tools I would HIGHLY recommend giving him a shout. This isn’t my first dealing with Tad and every time I have spoken with him or bought something from him you would get excellent service. Automotive Specialty Tools

Anyway, if you have never used a 3 jaw puller on a crankshaft pulley before it is pretty straight forward. There are 3 jaws that connect to either the 3 inside prongs of the pulley or along the outside of the pulley. I grabbed a 1” reducer and put it into the threaded insert for the crank pulley bolt and started cranking. Once it got to a certain point the crank pulley popped right off. It’s nice when you have the right tools to do the job for once haha. Anyway, it looked a little something like this.

At this point it was time to start breaking into the engine and seeing what is going on in there. So I started removing the front cover. I took the RTV off by hand and grabbed the front cover at the top and pulled it off. Off comes the front cover and I started working on removing the timing chains.



I started with the LH side. First you rotate the crank until the keyway is at the 12 o’clock position and all 4 data matrix’s on the cams are facing up. From there you can remove the tensioner. Remember that the tensioner is still under pressure so unless you are holding it up or propping it up somehow it will probably fly off somewhere. When I removed the tensioner I found little bits of metal on the plunger (I guess that is what you would call it) as well as the timing chain guides.


Keyway at the 12 O’clock position

Data Matrix on the top of the camshafts. All 4 have to be facing up. If they all aren’t facing up turn the crankshaft until the keyway is at the 12 o’clock position and all 4 are facing up.
From there you can remove the tensioner arms. You might have to rotate the crankshaft to release a little bit more tension in the chain so you can remove the timing chain guides. After that remove the 6 screws holding the phasers on and you can slide the phasers forward 2 inches. Make sure you depress the secondary tensioner and rotate it 90 degrees this way you can remove the phasers.



After that you can remove the secondary chain. That being said, I completely forgot to look for the timing mark on the LH side so I have no idea where it was which is bugging me. Anyway, when I looked at the timing chain on the RH side I noticed that it looks like the marks don’t line up. From best I can tell the dark link is supposed to be lined up with the indentation on the phaser. Can someone confirm if this is true or not?



The procedure is basically the same for removing the RH timing chains except this time you turn the keyway to the 9 o’clock position. After the primary and secondary timing chains are removed, I slid off the crank sprocket followed by the oil pump. Then I went back up top and started removing the cams. The workshop manual is very clear about this since they say it a couple of times and have it written in bold. You have to remove the front camshaft bearing mega cap first or else you could damage the engine. Considering how good I am at damaging the engine just by starting and driving it I figured if I didn’t do this first I would end up cracking it in half somehow so what the hell. After that I slowly started loosening the bolts for the rest of the cam caps following the torqueing sequence this way I could remove whatever spring pressure was on the cams evenly. After removing the front mega cap I found some pretty bad scoring on the cam journals and once again I found some pretty big metal flakes on the camshafts. After removing all the cam caps I was able to pull the cams out and found scoring on almost all 32 journals. They are deep enough where you can feel them through the glove and your fingernail catches on them. I’m not certain how bad that is but that will be addressed later after talking to some people about the build plans. Anyway, onto more pictures.

Some pictures of the metal pieces on the cams:









That being said when I cleaned off the cams and I saw this on all 4 cams. I am assuming that these marks are normal since they all have it but I just want to make sure that is the case. I also left the filters for the cams in there.





After that I removed the crankshaft position sensor and the cylinder head temperature sensor. I cleaned up the heads a little bit and took the picture-o-shinyness



Well you are all caught up at this point. This weekend I would like to finally remove the oil cooler and open up the oil pump and see if anything is cracked in there or not. I just have to find a 13-16mm Allen Key so I can try and take off the oil cooler and I will be in business again and hopefully tear the engine down a lot more.

• Cam Cap Bolts – 20 each side (40 total) x 10mm
• Cylinder Head Temperature Sensor – 1 x ¾”
• Front Cover – 8 x 10mm / 7 x 13mm
• Oil Pump – 2 x 8mm / 1 x 9mm / 1 x 13mm
• Phasers – 3 per phaser (12 total) x 10mm
• Timing chain Guides – 1 each side (2 total) x 10mm
• Timing Chain Tensioners – 2 each side(4 total) x 10mm

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Was it a strong tic or maybe a bearing knock? I'm interested in how the bearings look. The cams could of had the scratches from metal particles or from a lack of lubrication.

BruceH said:

Was it a strong tic or maybe a bearing knock? I'm interested in how the bearings look. The cams could of had the scratches from metal particles or from a lack of lubrication.

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It sounded like rod knock to me but I drained out at least 7 quarts of oil and whatever else came out of the engine upon tear down and what not so IDK if it was due to oil starvation or what. I did see a slight drop in oil pressure about 5 psi a couple of days before it started ticking so I am thinking that the bearings are chewed up something good. I am going to be putting the cams back in the heads (after I remove the bolts) for now so I can remove them without anything falling out and at the very best try and get the pistons out of the engine tomorrow.

But yes, it was a very strong tick. It didn't sound like a metal hitting metal but it was coming towards the bottom of the engine.

Sean what oil? No cel's?

Originally Motorcraft 5W-50 then Quaker State Full Synthetic 5W-50 that met Ford's oil standard.

Yes, I have had a couple of CEL's
P0305 twice
P0345 once
and 3 of them that I wasn't able to identify. That includes the flashing CEL for the Crankshaft Position Sensor. They would all go off on their own eventually and randomly.

Come to think about it they all have been indicative of the RH side of the engine where it looks like the chain jumped a tooth or two. Also, looking back when I tried to take off the RH primary chain the chain just started spinning on me until I put the top portion back on the crank gear.

How come you didnt let the dealer sort it out?

jewc75 said:

How come you didnt let the dealer sort it out?

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Everytime I would get a CEL to come on I could never get to the dealer before it went out. So I figured it was just the wiring harness that was just going to shit like has happened to a lot of the Boss guys who were having the same exact problems. They would do a new wiring harness or send it out to PRS to have it rewired and repinned and their problems would be solved.

As far as the engine is concerned I was told by the dealer when I bought the car that there was no warranty plus I did have the tune on the car so I thought if I went into any of the dealerships around here saying the engine is acting up they would hand me a very large bill to break it down or try and fix it. Since I was going to tear into the engine I figured now was an opportune time to do so. Plus I am bored and need something to do over the winter.

Lol alright. Well cant wait to see what you do.

First of all, great, detailed write up. If you continue to write in such detail I am going to move this to tech. A lot of great info here.

BruceH said:

Was it a strong tic or maybe a bearing knock? I'm interested in how the bearings look. The cams could of had the scratches from metal particles or from a lack of lubrication.

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My first thought also. Larger bearing clearances will make your oil pressure go south, and possible oiling issues up top. I will be very interested to see how your rod and main bearings look also.

Good work so far.
I really doubt it jumped time though. You can put it all together, line the marks up, turn it over a few times and the marks won't line up anymore. Means nothing. Also note there are marks on the back of the phasers and colored links on the short chains if you didn't see.

Curious to see what you find, to me it looks like something in the oiling system gave up in a big way and tore up everything. Those heads will need to be replaced unless you can find a place to line bore them.

If you even need a hand with this reach out. Im right on other side of TZ bridge and happy to lend a hand if around. Good luck.

That is to bad. Nice write up. After everything is figured out what is your plan for the car?

I'm in to see your progress brother. Great info and I look forward to learning some more.

slagburn said:

Good work so far.
I really doubt it jumped time though. You can put it all together, line the marks up, turn it over a few times and the marks won't line up anymore. Means nothing. Also note there are marks on the back of the phasers and colored links on the short chains if you didn't see.

Curious to see what you find, to me it looks like something in the oiling system gave up in a big way and tore up everything. Those heads will need to be replaced unless you can find a place to line bore them.

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I saw the marks on the back of the phasers but I didn't notice the colored links on the timing chains. That is good news though that it more than likely didn't jump timing. I thought that once the marks were lined up it stayed that way.

Mikes06GT said:

If you even need a hand with this reach out. Im right on other side of TZ bridge and happy to lend a hand if around. Good luck.

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I might take you up on the offer. Thanks dude, I could use all of the luck I could get lol.

Johnf78 said:

That is to bad. Nice write up. After everything is figured out what is your plan for the car?

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Right now just rebuild it and try to make as much power N/A as possible. I'm hoping to maybe get above 500 when all is said and done. Outside of that I am not 100% certain but I'm talking to Aaron over at JPC about an engine right now.

moostang09 said:

I'm in to see your progress brother. Great info and I look forward to learning some more.

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Hopefully I will have a bit more of an update a bit later on today!

Awesome write-up so far. Hate seeing all the metal chips. That stuff gets everywhere and requires a real effort to get rid of it all so it does not find its way into the rebuild...

If it is a bearing the rebuild would be fairly simple. If you aren't in for that then an Aluminator would work out pretty good too. Swap your boss heads on and have a bunch of parts to rework or sell.

Just a thought.

HELP!!!!!

How do I get these Boss rods off?!?! They aren't cracked from the factory. I think Ford pressed them onto the crankshaft. I think I'm going to try and get a sawzall and try and cut them off. Sound like a good idea?

S197Probie said:

Awesome write-up so far. Hate seeing all the metal chips. That stuff gets everywhere and requires a real effort to get rid of it all so it does not find its way into the rebuild...

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Yeah, I'm not looking forward to cleaning up the block since I'm not certain how I would even do it at this point. I don't believe you can use water since I would think it would start rusting things on the inside when I try to clean out the oil galleys and the cooling passages etc.

BruceH said:

If it is a bearing the rebuild would be fairly simple. If you aren't in for that then an Aluminator would work out pretty good too. Swap your boss heads on and have a bunch of parts to rework or sell.

Just a thought.

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People have told me I have more money than brains and since there isn't a whole lot going on upstairs that is a bad thing for my wallet. I plan on doing just a wee bit more than an aluminator, closer to a Cobra Jet Block and build the engine from there. Although an Aluminator would be a pretty cheap alternative to what I plan on doing and has been something I have been really thinking about lately.

ford20 said:

HELP!!!!!

How do I get these Boss rods off?!?! They aren't cracked from the factory. I think Ford pressed them onto the crankshaft. I think I'm going to try and get a sawzall and try and cut them off. Sound like a good idea?

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http://www.s197forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=115685