The oil pan has several ports in it, three (3) M12x1.5 ports and one (1) 1/8-27 NPT.
Two of the M12 ports are in the lower, front portion of the pan on the left and right as drain plugs. The last of the M12 ports at the upper side of the left side of the pan for a dipstick tube. The 1/8-27 port is near the bottom of the pan below the dipstick tube.
Due to clearance issues, I’m going to use the right-side M12 as the primary drain-plug for the car. I’ve put plugs in the remaining two M12 ports. (My Duratec has its dipstick tube located through the head/valve cover.) I’ve also installed a plug in the 1/8-27 port since the clearance there is too tight for a temperature sensor.
After installing the engine into the car, I’ve attempted to fit the alternator with the mounting kit supplied by GBS but ran into the usual snag that I was shipped the wrong parts for my application.
To make a long story short in two bullet points:
After installing the engine/transmission I found that one of the flanges I'd had to cut off the transmission case hadn't been trimmed enough. In the photo below you can see where it is contacting the chassis.
It took a week to wrangle up the help of a friend to pull whole package back out and grind out some clearance.
GBS don't really provide any kind of template for just how much you need to remove/grind away from the transmission case for fitment.
To stuff the engine and transmission package into the GBS some trimming needs to happen. Specifically, few mounting tabs and part of the bell housing have to go away. This is particular to the Ford Duratec to NC Miata/MX-5 gear boxes.
On stock cars with stock oil pans the lower bell housing bolts thread into the pan. When using a low-profile sump the lip of the bell housing extends lower than the oil sump by about an inch and a half. Best just to trim it off rather than catch a rock or a curb
The job is pretty straight forward, you just need to slice it off clean across the bottom just under the wall of the bell housing where it spiders out into webbing for the bell housing’s flange. A straight edge works great, a sharpie is good for marking out what you want to cut vs what you souls to cut. Then it’s just a matter of going at it in bits and pieces with an angle grinder. It took a bit of work and swearing to make it happen but it happened.
This evening after work I knocked out installation of the flywheel, clutch, and starter motor.
Today I'm reminded that, sometimes, it's hard to get some fasteners to properly torque them down without some kind of adapter or lever. The problem is that when you add an adapter/lever to reach a hard to get to fastener you change the lever length of the torque wrench and thus change/increase the amount of torque that's being applied, sometimes by a lot. Fortunately there's math for that.
In the most simple application where we have to extend the total arm length we have to reduce the amount of torque applied the formula looks like this:
R = L * T / L + A
- R = The reduced torque
- L = The length of the torque wrench from the center of the head to the center of the grip.
- T = The initial torque required.
- A = The length of the adapter between the center of adapter heads.
In this case, I need to tighten a water neck bolt that's blocked by the water neck so I'm using a 10mm box end wrench as torque adapter:
- T = 93 in/lbs
- L = 240mm
- A = 120mm
When you boil this down you get the following:
For a more torque adapter formulas, go here:
http://www.fordservicecontent.com/renderers/torquewrench/wrench_formula_main_en.asp
Side Note: The specified torque value for the thermostat housing/water neck on the 2.5L Ford Duratec is 89 in/lbs (7.1 lb/ft), I'm going with the higher generalized torque value of 91 in/lbs (7.6 lb/ft) because .5 lb/ft difference is effectively a rounding error.
Been a while Stuff has happened.
GBS shipped me a now oil pickup, it arrived this week after what felt like an eternity so that’s now installed. The oil pain and oil filter housing are also now installed on the engine.
The pickup requires an o-ring seal, the original Ford o-ring seal does not fit in this application. (GBS machine the mating flanges, they could make it use the Ford o-ring if they wanted.) I think the most correct size is a Dash 022 o-ring but in a pinch a 1.0625” inside diameter ring will also work.
Cap screws get a dab of blue thread locker to make sure they don’t back out and are torqued to as close to spec as possible.
