AVOIDABLE! Blown Mercury Marauder 4.6L DOHC V8 Full Engine Teardown

today's tear down is a cool engine out of a cool car today we're going to tear down the engine out of my buddy Ian's 2003 Mercury Marauder and before I go into the details of this engine Ian hit me up and said hey I replaced the engine in my Marauder I sold the car do you want the old engine well yeah I got a whole Shop full of people's old engines of course I want it and then he wouldn't take money for it and brought it to me so not only did he bring me something that he could have sold or parted out and made some money on he spent his time in gas to bring it to me what a nice guy so I am going to mention his YouTube channel he didn't ask me to but he is he has a gaming channel so if you guys like to check that out I know not everybody's into it I'll leave a link in the video description but today we're going to tear down the engine out of his car this has 155,000 mil on it I know you guys love those details and he gave me some history with it apparently this thing suffered some issues with the thermostat a few times so it may have been warm at least more than once and it also started to use oil after it had overheated and he even told me he didn't always check the dipstick as often as he should have and that's likely why the engine is on the stand so today we're going to tear this all the way down see what I can salvage see what's bad and have some fun hopefully the marauder was essentially the hot rod version of the Crown Victoria the crown vix iron block single overhead cam two valves per cylinder the Marauders aluminum block dual overhead cam four valves per cylinder these engines make just north of 300 horsepower I know that doesn't sound like a lot for today's standards most people are used to 500 horsepower it seems but this was 20 years ago 300 was a pretty good number these engines share similar architecture and components with other modular V8s from that era this is essentially the same exact engine as an 03 or 04 Lincoln Aviator or 2005 for that matter you guys thought I was going to say cobra it's it's not the same as a cobra I know you guys are already typing out your comments it's not a cobra engine it's not a Mustang engine it is literally only the same as The Aviator minus the manifolds but it is pretty similar to those other 4.6 L dual overhead cam engines these engines are WAP blocks W I think that stands for not what cardi B says it stands for it stands for Windsor Assembly Plant she got it wrong this engine still has spark plugs in it so I'd like to turn it over to see how it feels I I understand that there's going to be some compression that is not compression that doesn't feel good no that's way too much force oh my gosh that doesn't feel good at all I don't hear anything banging around in there though and I can turn it all the way over which means it should come apart with no trouble the next thing we're going to do is pull the spark plugs that one didn't break I'm just kidding they don't do that they have been known to pull the threads out well I got the plugs out they all have painted tips on them which makes me think that they might be original but at 155k I don't think so but the first thing I noticed holy gapperoni they might be original that seems like stretch and I'm not making a pun there but I don't see any smash tips or or broken electrodes straps appear to all be in okay shape and everything is uniform which is a good thing to see first we're going to tackle the EGR pipe going to spray some penetrator on it let that soak in next we'll remove this bracket which blocks the top of the EGR pipe and some more penetrator let's see if we can crack this loose use my small crescent wrench oo that's pretty tight that's really tight it turned but I don't know if that was good or not it doesn't sound good or feel good work it back and forth a little bit ah yeah looks like it's pulling the fitting out of the uh exhaust manifold which is fine we can work with that all right I think that's out I think that's just hanging on there we'll come back to that let's get to the other fitting I'm sure this one will come straight out right ooh screamer will you [Music] hush well it's off the next thing I'm going to do is crack the intake manifold bolts loose we're going to pull the intake I'm going to start with these difficult ones under here you don't need to split these to get these off I'm going to crack these Loose by hand because the battery on my impact seems to have dissenter now this intake should lift straight up looks like five was living in here there's no five left in here please please no that's just a lot of junk okay I'm going to get this cleaned out real quick and thankfully there's no mouse to evict let's take a look at these intake ports that looks good also looks good and looks like there's a little debris in there probably from when I pulled the intake manifold off they're nice and clean and I don't see any chunks of metal I also don't see any signs of moisture which is nice I don't think this engine sat outside at least not when it was outside of the car everything looks good now this is for sure a Midwestern engine out of a Midwestern car and there's lots of corrosion lots of rust so I don't have a lot of hope that we're going to get this exhaust manifold off but we're still going to try broke didn't even need to take that one out next we'll spray some penetrator on the bolts it's going to work guys it's going to work I think we're going to need a little bit of heat to get these out as well and thankfully I got a little bit indigestion tonight so this shouldn't be a problem well that broke hey look at that yeah the parcel good that's bad we'll come back to that one [Music] h I have an idea what's the Worst That Could Happen will you come out oh now I did it I give up we're just going to continue apparently that's not a good idea either that's not coming off what is happening I don't get it well I got my socket back because the socket rolled off of my table hit the ground and apparently that was just at the right angle to knock the broken stuff off there's nothing left here that's not coming off tonight folks well actually let's get a 12 and Hammer it on what's the worst that could happen I think we can get this one off with a 12 hey that is supposed to be a 13 yes hey broke which is better than I could have expected I suppose all right so the manifolds off we have one two that broke at the rear the rest of them came out uh these are four thread heads uh the casting ends in ag the threads the nine thread heads the ones that everybody wants the expensive ones will end in DB or DC so these are not the most valuable heads but if I can save them I will now the dip stick tube as if I didn't just get done fighting the exhaust manifold it's going to be fine guys got to have a little faith that was an eight or maybe it's a seven now it's a seven now or it's going to be that is the sacrificial 7 mm all righty one Bolt left please just just come out yeah come on I may have oil in it still yeah yeah yeah and I didn't wreck it now it's time for the valve cover blue I really don't want to damage these I be careful ah thankfully they didn't take a lot of force okay so let's take a gander first good thing Bridge chain guides still in place that is a problem with these things doesn't look super varnished a little bit of Varnish in here but it's not terrible I don't see any rockers out of place loes on the cam look pretty good I don't really see anything jumping out at me here now this is the other side exhaust manifold I'm not even going to make an attempt right now I think that's an 11.7 87 size socket or something close to that and I we'll just I can pull the head with the manifold we're just going to do that later now the right side valve [Applause] cover a little assistance from Blue uh maybe not there we are similar story on this Bank guides look like they're intact I don't see any issues there little bit more varnish on this side but not terrible all the valve train looks to be pretty good there's a plug seal I don't see any major problems I don't see a bunch of glitter or shiny stuff everything looks okay next we need to remove the harmonic balancer all right let's see if my little impact will get this off easy peasy next the water pump pulley next we may as well take the water pump off got my pan underneath it just in case wow they came out really easily this thing looks uh pretty nice it's not Rusty impeller looks good I think this thing was replaced it does not look like this might be an original part it's still this is uh an excellent condition water pump nothing but box next we have some 13 mm bolts to take [Music] out and a couple 18s I think this will come off pretty easily yeah these were never that bad to take off Hey ow timing cover looks good don't see any issues there now I have seen a number of these engines fail from timing guides falling apart these do not appear to be replacement components but they are in very good shape don't see any problems here very very primitive Timing System and that's not a bad thing the first thing we're going to do is remove the cam gears or at least loosen the cam gears it makes this a little easier too much too much next we will remove the tensioners it's full of oil oil doesn't look too bad launch out o we're leaking thank goodness for these pans yeah tensioners look good now we'll remove these rails ooh they just slide off no tools needed so yes they do have some wear they're not terrible let's see if we can find a date on these Morse yeah there's quite a bit of we where the tensioner was yeah these appear to be original they're decent same thing here here the plastic is in good shape but there's a little bit of wear from the tensioner ooh that's not good so I don't know if you can see that but there's some silver sparkles some forbidden glitter First Signs inside this engine let's get the rest of these rails out of the [Music] way that feels like it's under tension um uh what can we do about that blue that can come off I think we can get this chain off oh that's under attention too what what has happened ah there we are what a chain not a ton of wear now the other one can I oh stuff's happening it's trying to equal out the tension will you give give it to me I don't see any dates on these which lends me to think these are original [Music] nice can I get this one off yes look at that beautiful pair of chains and then this timing gear just slides right off next I think I can slide this cam gear off yeah that came right off that came off and I can't really get to that tensioner will these slide off no still has a lot of tension I think we're getting close oh it's going to shoot something out we don't need that perfect yeah that's good these rails definitely have some wear but they're not bad another thing I really like about these engines is that you can remove the heads without taking the cam shafts out I think that's awesome but we're going to take these covers off at least least take a peek to see what they look like because if they're really scored up I want to know let's get to camman I guess I missed it when I pulled the valve cover off but I did find a little bit forbidden glitter not a lot just a little bit right there on that cam cap we can unbolt these just a little tap wow that's really in there there we are oh that's not good well it starts off not so bad all the Rockers pretty decent not a ton of damage or wear in the journals but if you look a little closely that's some foreign metal and then you get to the exhaust side more foreign material and then you get to this one yikes that one's pretty torn up now looking at the intake cam it doesn't look too concerning until you roll it over and you realize what is bearing material I'm assuming bearing material doing on the cam journal how could that get there and then you look at the caps and they definitely show some wear like there's been some metal that's not supposed to be there run through them maybe run a little dry but the exhaust side exhaust cam is the most telling that's a lot of stuff that's not supposed to be there and more and more and this is why we pulled the cams out of heads like this because just because it looks good on the outside doesn't mean it's good on the inside the last thing I want to do is sell something it's good when it isn't and journal's pretty rough they all are not I don't know if that means these heads are trash I I don't think the four thread heads are worth a bunch of money anyway if these were nine thread heads I'd say they're probably worth some Machining but I don't know about these now we can crack the head bus [Music] loose and this should just come right off well there's head gasket let check this out I don't see any cause for concern here it looks good take a look at the cylinders well actually before we go any further I don't think anything's broken but we must do our test that was a little loud but so far so good aside from some debris in here cylinder walls not terrible a little bit of wear at the edge there we'll know more once the Pistons are out I don't see anything glaring except for my flashlight cylinder head looks pretty good as well I don't see anything too terrible don't see any cracks all of the combustion Chambers look very uniform before we get started on this head we need to get this uh coolant pipe unbolted same thing as the other head we'll get the cam gears off first now on this bank I can get the tensioner unbolted I don't know if that's going to help [Applause] us blue I need you this is working out out I feel like something bad's about to happen let me put my hand next to it Oh see it's fine whoops that looks good let's cram these off lost one very similar story on this Bank rollers feel pretty good journals don't look terrible I think there's less debris on this side little bit of damage there there's some debris in that one and that one is by far the worst same story with the cams that's not supposed to be there the journals aren't really too rough but they're also not perfect journals they are rough this is the intake here and the exhaust is worse I think journals might polish out maybe not now we can crack these head bolts [Music] loose okay then now this is going to be a little heavier and trickier should be fine oh we're leaking it's fine let's take a look at this head gasket here yeah I don't see any problems nothing's nothing is really jumping out at me I don't see anything burned through it's decent all right first science uhoh that's not good something's wrong right there I don't think we've got any broken rods though so this looks pretty normal but this one has a distinct appearance of the combustion chamber it seems to have made contact with the cylinder head I don't see any deep valve dings but the Piston definitely struck the cylinder head and the only way that happens is to have a rod that's either too long which uh that didn't happen or a lack of bearing I'm going to go with that that one looks pretty decent and that one looks good some vertical wear on these cylinders ah that shows it much better we'll know more as we take this apart and the cylinder head looks pretty good but you can definitely tell piston kissed the head you can see how it's clean there's no carbon there that's the Piston making contact I don't see any crack or any other damage and to be honest this kind of damage I'm using air quotes is kind of superficial I don't see any major issues here and there not a crack in the valve I don't think I think that's just some coating next we're going to make a big mess and turn this thing over it's okay we have pigm we're just going to do this nice and slow so most of it ends up in the pan that's a lot of coolant oh now the oil starts a there's a bunch of oil probably should have drained that first we're draining it now all right that's good enough to get the pan off now we can pull the pan and it appears that my M12 battery has gotten over disent usually that takes you off the trail I think this should just lift up two these aren't aren't glued down and that's nice oh that's not nice let's get this gasket that's still good that went somewhere well the inside of the pan looks like a piece of impressionist art it's pretty awesome I mean not for Ian but for us and I don't see any big chunks but the pickup there's some chunks some bearing chunks but not enough to clog it that's not what killed this that's that's because the bearing fell apart now I do remember that the problem was the second piston back and let's check these here uhoh ding there's our problem there's going to be some bearing damage in that cylinder right there can't check the rest of them because well we've got to get this stuff out of the way which is exactly what we're going to do now pick up tube out without a hitch next we'll remove the oil pump this slides right off thank God I had a pan there now we're going to take the oil pump apart but I wanted to show you the metal debris that was between the the gear of the oil pump and the crankshaft that's this right here see I just wipe that away that's not a good place to find metal now let's take the oil pump apart oh yeah that's not so great it's gritty and not nitty let's give this a bath so we can take a look at what we've got here well the oil pump housing has some pretty deep grooves in it and the outer case does as well the gears lots of damage as you'd expect and the finish on the inside isn't even that good this thing chewed on itself for quite some time now I looked at the rest of these they all seem to be pretty good let's uh turn this over so I can show you the uh amount of play in that one cylinder that's missing a bearing okay I think it's this one uh yeah it was that one the rest of these are fine when I say fine they're not as bad as that cylinder now it's time to get the rods and pistons Out start at the front of the engine it's just cleaner that way let's see how hard these are to get out not too bad now we'll turn it over to get to the next two which is the the journal with the offending Rod that sounds different CU they're not under the same tension oh it's rough that's not shaped right starting to turn over a little easier still too much resistance this piston is full of oil while we're back here we'll get this rear main seal plate out I don't know if that's going to come out sounds like it's going to come out that a significant amount of oil I think the uh arms of my stand are inhibiting this from coming out so we'll have to tackle that when we get to that point that might be a little bit of a a job well I pulled the filter off off camera cut it open and let's go take a look at the results mhm yep that's where the rod bearing is it's in the filter I don't think we can put this one back together guys next we'll get the oil filter housing off now this is the point in the tear down where I got really jammed up with these engines in the past the heck I can't get these out really now oh man I am unsure of what to do at this point I guess we could just beat the tar out of it well that was dangerous don't worry it was broken before I know what I'm doing because sometimes these Spade bolts for the main caps are uh impossible to get out but you guys came up with some pretty good tips uh I'm going to start to use a few of those we're going to see if we can smack him with a hammer kind of see if we can break the seal as such now I'm kind of wondering if I should use the breaker bar or the impact I think I'm going to try the breaker bar first this is going to make or break us as far as getting the rest of this apart okay [Music] five down five to go come on don't fail me now yeah oh what a relief it is I can zip these out and a Thrust cap you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to unbolt the block and let it sag a little bit so I can get this plate out it'll be a little easier to get this apart don't look see it's fine yeah I don't know if that bought me any space in in all realness Let's uh unbolt These Arms I still don't know if I can get this out okay so this is sketchy it's a bolt and a half holding this on and I'm hammering on it it really doesn't want to look oh here we go success all right all right I've got that out of the way I've got three bolts holding the block now I'm going to get blue I guess I could try to lift the crank out of it we'll try that we'll give it a give it a go hey look what happened all right now the crank should lift right out like a glove let's start with with the rod bearings uh doesn't look good not so great and this was the offending one you can see they're quite a lot thinner they're distorted especially this one the top shell there was honestly more bearing there than I expected for how much movement this had but we'll get to that in a minute adjacent cylinder rough that one's not as bad nor that one or that one but then that one was coming apart as well the rods and pistons look okay for the most part not a ton of skirt wear but definitely worth mentioning this was the one that struck the head and I didn't really see any cracks or damage I mean obviously it made contact but it didn't do any damage to the Piston there's more pretty deep skirt wear the wrist pins are not the most lubricated I would wager there's a little bit of debris in there some of them don't move too bad but if you remember me telling you that this thing had gotten hot once or twice uh when one of these engines or any engine gets hot it can change uh the springiness that's a technical term of the piston rings which can cause it to start using oil the Rings lose some of their tension that's why when you overheat an engine and you put a brand new head on it sometimes they run great but they also use oil the main bearings those shells aren't too bad but these definitely had their fair share of debris run through them especially the thrust it's the rear main bearing and onto the crankshaft it'll be very apparent where the problem is you can definitely see how much material is missing and that's why the end of that rod had so much movement on the crankshaft it wasn't the bearing that had come apart I mean obviously the bearing is is is destroyed but it isn't as bad as we've seen when they delete the bearing I guess the crankshaft is not quite as hard of a material as some other crankshafts are the rest of it doesn't look too bad but in my experience Ford cranks very inexpensive new or remanufactured as such they're not worth putting the time or money into one thing we are going to do is take a measurement we're going to measure the good one which the the actual measurement is is irrelevant we're looking for the difference between the two so I'm going to measure this one and then we're going to zero it and measure this one so that's let's open this up this is a highly highly highly uh accurate tool from A Fine city in Pennsylvania okay okay so then we can zero it 53,000 off ises that look like 53,000 off to you well that's what this tool says one thing worth mentioning about the block is it does have a broken off bell housing bolt it's is pretty common for these aluminum blocks I've seen it happen many times the BS really aren't too bad there's definitely some wear uh you can definitely feel your fingernail in that one I would not suspect that this will clean up with a dingle ball hone but is it worth saving I know it can be but is it worth it it doesn't take much and some times it doesn't even take that long for the problems to manifest from an oil starvation situation I like to think of this as just imagine the health of your engine as the ball at the top of the mountain there's equal forces on both sides it's pretty easy to keep stationary all you have to do is check your oil maintain oil level and change it periodically that's how to keep your engine healthy the ball is at the top of the hill the minute it starts running low on oil it starts to move one way takes a lot more Force to keep it up there and eventually you can't hold it up there any longer and that ball starts rolling downhill and that's when the engine comes apart now sometimes you can catch it early you can put rod bearings in it put an oil pump in it a pickup tube whatever is the problem sometimes an O-ring but in most cases that what I've seen by the time you catch it the damage is done this this is done this engine is done now there's a lot of good parts here but there was no saving this at this stage in the game there's way too much metal run through this engine the heads have damage the Pistons one piston is slightly damaged one of the rods is is done the crank is done I mean yes you could rebuild it but is it worth it these engines aren't crazy expensive but they're also not that cheap considering the car is 20 years old and it doesn't matter what you drive you could have some high-end exotic or some cheap car chances are you don't want it to fail you don't want it to blow up so I I don't want to be preachy just check your oil just maintain your oil level and if you buy a car that's used which most of us do and you don't know if it uses oil and obviously not everyone that sells a car is super uh ethical and tells you everything check it really often when you first buy a car because you need to establish a pattern a trend does it use oil does it not use oil does it use oil at this rate because then you can stay on top of it and that's all you want to do you want to keep the ball at the top of the hill it might be pretty farfetched but that's just the way way I see it I really hope you enjoyed this tear down you all owe Ian a huge thank you again if you're a gamer you want to check out his channel there'll be a link in the video description if you'd like to buy any parts out of this engine or anything else I've torn down or will be tearing down which there is a lot there's not everything's here I still have 30 engines or so maybe 25 to pick up so that's it's a it's a a long list but if you want to buy anything uh you can go to art.com or you can email us at importart sales atgmailcom I really hope you enjoyed this tear down as always I love all the comments all the feedback and even the criticism I love it all and I'll catch you on the next one

Channel: I Do Cars

Views: 169,905

Keywords: Mercury, Marauder, Ford, V8, DOHC, Cobra, Mustang, Mach 1, Aviator, Lincoln, New Edge, Terminator, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, Engine, Motor, Mechanic, Repair, I Do Cars, Teardown, Timing, Timing Chain, Marks, Heads, Cams, Cylinder head, Build, Swap, Fox Body, 9 Thread heads, 4 thread heads, spark plugs, broken, blown, failure, oil, change, overheating, misfire, diagnosis, repair, Bearing, knocking, ticking, noise, Initech, Mark 8, Mark VIII, Rebuild, Project, Blower, Supercharger, Eaton, Exhaust, headers, Sound, Clip, problems, v8

Id: G2NVVcgf9nc

Length: 47min 34sec (2854 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 24 2023