New engine in!!!

I finally got the engine in today and WOW it runs so much better than the 160K engine I took out. I did the swap because the old engine had a faint knocking to it, didn't trust it.

Anyway, the point of this post was to tell how I put the engine in. There was an earlier discussion in the week about removing the motor mounts from the block or leaving them on. Well after trying several attempts at getting everything lined up with the motor mounts on the block, I said screw it, and removed the motor mounts.

I wish I had done this to begin with! Once I removed them from the block, only 3 bolts each, I had all kinds of room for alignment and fitting. I was even able to lower the engine below where the motor mounts are and actually used a ratchet on those damn two top bell housing bolts!!!!! After it was bolted up to the tranny I simply raised it on the lift and installed the motor mounts and inserted the 2 big bolts, 1 on each side. I would recommend doing it this way to anyone. To each his own, but this worked well for me!

:thumbup:

Feels good when it all works out right and it's finally done, right? Congrats!
I agree about the mounts. I ran into that at the u-pull-it where I got my rebuild motor from. I had everything undone, except for the two torx bolts, and the place was closing. Went back two days later (no one touched it!) and undid the mounts, lowered the engine, and those top two bolts were a cinch to remove. Followed the same procedure removing my old one at home, and installing the rebuild.

scca28 said:

Feels good when it all works out right and it's finally done, right? Congrats!
I agree about the mounts. I ran into that at the u-pull-it where I got my rebuild motor from. I had everything undone, except for the two torx bolts, and the place was closing. Went back two days later (no one touched it!) and undid the mounts, lowered the engine, and those top two bolts were a cinch to remove. Followed the same procedure removing my old one at home, and installing the rebuild.

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Yes, it felt great. The only issue I had was forgetting to tighten the big bolt ground on the back of the head. That caused all kinds of nice issues with the idle. Anyway, after I realized I hadn't tightened it, I did and this smoothed everything out. I also included a new all aluminum radiator, all new hoses, new thermostat housing and thermostat as well. The things runs so damn good it made all the hard work worth it.....!

92xjdean said:

Yes, it felt great. The only issue I had was forgetting to tighten the big bolt ground on the back of the head. That caused all kinds of nice issues with the idle.

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Ha! It just wouldn't feel right unless you forgot something...In my case, I was so worried about setting the dist in properly, that I forgot to plug in the connector for it! But, she fired right up on the first crank after I plugged it in.

I guess when an engine's all apart, we naturally spend a little extra time triple checking ourselves, because you don't want to go back in there again once it's all sealed up. But when it comes to dropping in the completed motor, with the excitement and anticipation of seeing it run for the first time, it's easy to overlook one or two items. The good thing is, most external oopsies aren't that bad, compared to an internal one.