2008 December | Techmerc's Fix it Blog

Powerstroke Teardown - Internal Analisys

Ok so I have been busy and unable to post as of late but I have been working on the engine. After getting some good bolts to mount the engine on the stand with I continued teardown. Let’s go through a few things to do. Remove the wire harness from the engine, pull the turbo pedestal, pull the valve covers, remove upper valve train and injectors (keep everything organized as to how it came out), and then begin head removal. Each head has 18 bolts both inside the valve cover and out. The bolts should be removed in a particular order to prevent head warpage. I won’t go into the exact order, but work in pairs from the outside of the head towards the inside. Once the bolts are removed the heads can be removed and are best handled with a crane or two people, they are heavy. My heads were quite hard to remove and were easier to remove once the engine was rotated with the head pointing straight up. After the heads were removed, we tore out the lifters and organized them with their appropriate valve train parts. Then we removed the high pressure oil pump, it’s resevoir, the harmonic balanced, the low pressure oil pump, and the front timing cover. Keep in mind that the front cover and oil pan are held on with a spread on rubberized gasket material that will require prying. Do not get impatient, you don’t want to bend anything. After the timing cover I did rotate the engine and remove the oil pan. This is messy and will spill a lot of oil, use oil absorbent, or cheap kitty litter will work too (same stuff practically). After the oil pan was off we finished removing the oil pickup tube. One end was attached to the front timing cover, the other to a bracket on a main bearing cap. Then we began to remove the pistons using a 17MM 12 point socket to loosen the connecting rod caps, which have 12pt nuts. Somewhere in here we also removed a few valves out of the heads. During this all this we found that the valves on the passenger side have eroded and lost their margins at the mating surfaces which has also damaged the valve seats. We pulled the two dead pistons and realized they had missing rings and significant damage to both. There may be some connecting rod bearing damage as well but I haven’t determined that completely yet. We also found ring bits in the oil pickup tube. We suspect this is the original failure of the engine and consequently it began to take the hydraulic lifters with it. Several of them appear to be clogged and are not moving. This means they were not passing oil to the rockers and valves on top of not moving properly. We believe this has a significant role to play in the valve train damage. Stay tuned, more to come. Enjoy the pictures.

Engine powerwashed with harness and valve covers removed.

Passenger head with injectors, glow plugs, and upper valve train removed

Well there's your problem

That's not just streaking, that's cylinder damage.

Badly focused shot of #5 and #7 positions on the head, notice the valves are recessed too much

Top of #5 piston

Num 5 piston from the side, missing rings and chunks of metal

Engine on stand, working on lower end

Intake seats for #5 and #7

Picture of valve face for #5 intake, that's not good.

Powerbuilt 648433 Piston Ring Compressor

Powerbuilt 648432 OH Valve Spring Compressor

Valve Lapping Stick-Small Dia.

Tags: Automotive by Technical Mercenary
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Powerstroke teardown day 3 - Engine Removal

So after leaving the engine fairly well stripped from our last encounter we follow up with a few things. First thing’s first, remove the starter, which is three bolts, the upper one is easier to reach across the top of the cross member with a long extension. Then we remove the Torque converter inspection cover and unbolt the converter from the engine. I used a large ratchet on the harmonic balancer to turn the engine over to reach all the bolts. Next thing is to unbolt the 6 main bolts from the transmission to the engine. This will require an obscene amount of socket extensions and wobble joints. I then noticed I had left my block heater intact and that it would hang. However I also noticed the cable was in real bad shape, like it had been chewed on by animals, so I just finished cutting the cable and I will repair it later. Next thing is to unbolt the engine from the frame and begin the lifting procedure. Now initially we unbolted the mounts from the frame cross member and tried to lift with a load leveler. I won’t go into to details but this is not the best way. The load leveler won’t clear the cowl and the bolts that go into the cross member are too long to pull all the way out when you lift. So we corrected that by using a steel bar between the lifting points on the engine with the engine hoist latched on between the two and chained to either lifting point for stability. The engine mounts are actually two pieces which will unbolt in half, allowing the need for less clearance. After clearing a few minor obstacles we were able to lift the motor out. Now there is video of this, but not all of it, just the climax. What you don’t see is a set of obstacles we had to overcome that would have made us poster children for “Why women live longer than men”. This engine depending on how it’s dressed has been quoted at weighing anywhere from 900lbs to 1100lbs, and we had way too many issues for our comfort. For one, the bar we used to lift the engine bent and almost broke on us. It was thicker than 1/2 solid steel yet developed a stress fracture at the lifting point. Also our temporary pad of asphalt didn’t work well and we had problems trying to make the hoist work on boards we laid across the pad. So lesson learned, give this thing some respect. Once the engine is free from the bay, remove the flywheel bolts and the transmission adapter plate. Now lesson learned here is that your tranny bolts are not usable on the stand, they are too loose, hence the jack on the front of the engine in the picture. It was Sunday and the fastener stores were close, it will hold till Monday when I can make the change.