Engine Rebuild

Work out which components to machine, replace or leave alone

Inspect your Essex V6 parts.

In the previous instalment, we stripped our Essex. You’ll already have formed an opinion as to whether your engine’s worn and knackered or fresh and frolicsome, because you will have intimately handled all of its most private parts. If you found huge ridges of wear in the bores and sloppy pistons, threadbare bearings, scored journals and worn camshaft lobes, then that’s all pretty definitive: put your bank account into the brace position, find a good machine shop and place a large parts order. However, if the engine was showing signs of only light wear, you’ll need to look at it very carefully to work out what can be reused.

Our Essex came from a Zodiac that hadn’t run in years. The sludge in the sump and the rust in the water jackets are telling us a decades-old story of shoddy maintenance. The piston skirts, cam lobes and followers, and other parts that were under load all show signs of abrasion, indicating that the oil was contaminated. Areas lubricated under pressure, such as the main, big end and camshaft bearings, aren’t too bad – though they show some wear.

The two ways to tell if bits need to be replaced are by visual inspection and by using cheap-to-buy measuring tools. All this is totally doable at home. Other checks such as crack-testing are also possible, but you may wish to delegate some tasks to your machine shop if you’re unsure.

It’s worth noting a quirk of Ford’s efficient manufacturing process. Not wanting to waste parts that had encountered casting problems, Ford often used workarounds that you might find when assessing your engine, particularly if it came from a car that didn’t wear a blue-oval badge. Engines left the factory with oversized pistons, sleeved bores, undersize crankshafts, castings with welded repairs and main-bearing housings bored 0.015in oversize. The latter will require special bearing shells. Keep your eyes peeled for such factory repairs.