Yes I am.

I didn't snap a pic of #5, but the timing mark was about as shown with the drawn on line. It was the furthest down of all the cylinders.

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Interesting. I'm running the explorer intake with e7 heads right now. Going to swap in a set of P heads when I pull the engine. I replaced all the plugs and there was a mix of motorcraft platinums and autolite 25's from the previous owner. The strap marks were all over the place.

 

Got my nitto 555r2's mounted in a 275/50/15, and gave the boost control a little sumthin.

NOW I'm out of fuel.
17.7 psi, 99.8% duty cycle, and dropping fuel pressure. I guess I have to turn it down #ad


bottom graph, blue line is fuel pressure, should be rising, not falling. Still managed to maintain 12.2 afr (gas scale), commanding 12.0.

That's probably a lil spicy for a stock explorer 5.0 anyways.

It was pretty chilly outside tonight, ~50f, so not really were these tires want to be, but still made a huge difference. Even with almost 18 psi I didn't feel like I was on the edge of death for once.

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Don’t run that high of injector duty cycle and also don’t run that lean haha

 

yea.. that was kinda the point of the post. I think I found (and surpassed) the limits. You'd probably have to read the rest of the thread.

 

Finally settled on a converter, went with an FTI triple disc. Unsure of exactly what stall, initially suggested 3400-3600 but I told him I'd be changing to 3.08 gears from the 3.73s soon, and he changed his suggestion. I believe I asked to go one step tighter, but waiting on the email from him clarifing what he recommend. Just ordered a couple days ago, so it's still a couple weeks out.
$1500 converter in a $300 transmission

Got the trans out today, what a cluster fawk. I had to Sawzall off an ear to get it to come out, and I'm gunna have to make some more room when gravity isn't helping it come out.

Also found the case connector is full of atf, so I got a new one of those on the way. Maybe pressure wash it before it goes back in.

Oh yea, decided to put the pimpxshift from the f250 into this truck instead, probably a next winter project. That gets me a ms3x and everything that brings.

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How would I go about moving this to the builds section? Should I just start it over?

 

I'm getting ready to buy a converter for my 4r70w .. I'd be interested to know how you like the FTI. I was looking at circle D.

 

I had a circle d in the cart and was going to pull that trigger, but the fti lifetime warranty got my attention.

He said it'll cover the converter for basically any reason. If the engine blows and kills the converter, if the trans blows and takes it out, or obviously if the converter itself is the issue. For the $200 I figured it was a no brainer.

1 free restall in a year period, otherwise $350-650

 

I tried something new and setup the flex fuel option to pull 7 degrees (-7) when there is no ethanol content, 0 added at 70%, which is what my pump e85 always is.

Anyways, instead of pulling timing it was adding timing all the time. It never dawned on me to make sure it was working as I intended.. So I drove it back and forth to work a couple times and a few hard pulls with an extra 6 something degrees in it.

I pulled a couple of the easy plugs last night and there's some specking on them. Fixed the tune and went and did a quick run around the block, it's breaking up under boost now and is down on power.

Leaving tomorrow for a week and a half. I'll have to pull all the plugs when I get back, I suspect I burnt one or a few. There's no smoke so I don't think I melted any pistons. I should probably do a compression test though.

I just remembered I got a bore camera now I could use to check things too.

 

Man I gotta stop jumping to conclusions. I couldn't leave for almost 2 weeks without knowing, so I pulled the plugs and wires out and found...

The exact same plug wire from last year failed in the exact same way.

I haven't put it back together yet, but all the plugs are fine aside from a little specking on the ceramic (very little on only a couple). So I'm pretty confident I didn't burn it down.



The worst plug. Most have nothing on them. IIRC this is #5 or 6.

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I "fixed" the burnt wire and still having a missing issue. Pulled the valve cover off, rockers, bore scoped the lifters, on bank 1. Everything looks fine. Obviously can't see the rollers or cam.
The missing seems to be mostly at idle/low load. I haven't taken it out for a rip yet, waiting for the compression tester before I put it all back together.
Decided to throw the bore scope in the bores, halfassedly. This is the #4 exhaust valve. I'm thinking this is the majority of my problem.

I my/it's defense this is a 200k engine I didn't open before putting the turbo onto.

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Now the decision is keep running it till the winter, pull them and have them rebuilt if i can even find anybody to do it (last time I tried to find someone to rebuild heads I was totally given the go the fuck away price), or put AL heads on it and keep spending spending spending.

 

Are the valve springs original?

 

No, they're Alex spring beehive for boost upgrades. 150# seat.

 

I did take it out last night, and aside from the random idle miss, it seems to run well.

I'm having a difficult time judging if it's down on power or if these tires just hook that well now, though. It pulls like a freight train but I just can't tell. I barely get any spin on the 1-2 whereas it used to be excessive. But maybe that's the nittos and 70+ degree roads now. I also have it down to 15psi due to not having enough fuel pump. Iirc it was a huge difference at 18psi, but memories are an odd thing ya know

 

So it has been running really funky. Loading up bad at idle, low speed missing, etc.. Considering the bore scope pic of the exhaust valve, I was expecting a really bad compression test. (tested stone cold, all plugs out, throttle wired wide open)

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Not actually that bad?

I did find the #5 plug gap nearly closed, and I'm not sure why. Iwasntt drunk (or even drinking, lol) when I put these in, so unless I slipped pretty bad putting it in (insert wife grimacing pic here), or somehow managed to mess it up taking it out. Not sure. It bent back REALLY easy. Like sorta afraid it'll come off in the chamber, so I'm going to replace it, jic.

I also replaced the stock tr55 plugs with tr6's, as they come stock with a .035 gap, whereas the 55's are like .050 which look really funky and unhappy when closed to .025-030.

Part of me really wants to just yank these and put some afr enforcer heads on, but almost all of me doesn't want to pay for that right now.

All of me wants to rip the heater box off the firewall right freaking now though, lol.

Edit: and the grommet for the #1, this is a pertronix ceramic 90° boot

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Fuck you, heater box.

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Tr6 is the ngk plug for the gt40p heads? Is that one step closer?

 

Yea stockers are tr55. Tr6 is literally the only other option. Half step colder, but way smaller factory gap. I didn't really have any issues with the 55's other than closing the gap from 045+ down to under 030 put the straps way out of parallel with the electrode.

 

Autolite 103 is 2 steps colder I think?