The heads do look ok, but NOT too recent of a head job.
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Rusty spark plugs? In a recent head job?
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The block is caked with oil, sludge, and grime, inside and out.
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This is what the interior of the valve covers looked like. That greenish brown milk is antifreeze mixed with oil.
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A closeup of the antifreeze and oil mixture. You can also see the build up of oil on the side of the valve cover. And this really smelled burnt.
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But the cylinders were ok with no buildup on the top of the pistons. Except for the off colored last cylinder - that's burned antifreeze.
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The entire engine bay and front frame were coated with oily sludge and grime. In places it was half an inch thick.
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Time to pull the engine. The Bronco is so tall the only way to reach is to stand in the engine bay and try not to slip on the oily sludge.
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This time we separated the transmission from the engine. This was considerably easier than as a single unit.
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Pulling an engine is not the easiest job. This one was slippery due to the oily buildup.
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A better shot of the buildup. There is a cross member under that sludge somewhere. My job will be to find it. Yuk!
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Obvious build up and leaks on the engine to trans plate.
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So we flipped the engine over to check the bottom of the connecting rods and the bearings. It looked ok on the surface.
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Sludge in the oil pan. And it smelled burnt as well. When we draimed the oil out of the engine before pulling it, we had several seconds of water and antifreeze before we had oil.
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To make everything easier to handle, we scraped the grime away.
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When we finally pulled the caps off, we determined a rebuild of the engine was a necessity. At least one of the bearings had spun. You are not supposed to see the copper surface under the bonded steel. So we shopped around and found a close engine shop that had a 305 they were selling.
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While we waited on it to arrive Kurt cleaned up the EFI and painted it.
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And he cleaned up the intake, polished the inlet ports and painted it.
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After I had scraped out the valve covers, those were painted as well. Of course everything had to be detailed out.
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Christmas in February when the new long block engine arrived. Considering the state of the heads, we decided not to trust that "recent head job".
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Nice and clean.
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Engine assembly time, but first it has to be painted Ford blue, which means all the shipping oil had to be removed.
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Not only was the engine bay caked with oily buildup, but also with mud in places, like the radiator support and under the washer fluid holder, not to mention the frame rails. I even cleaned pebbles out of the steering knuckle and wedged between the power steering lines.
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The firewall was cleaned of grime and then rust protected, since it had surface rust in a couple of areas.
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The battery tray is a bit rough for this young of a vehicle.
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But we cleaned up the batter tray and painted it. The inside of the tray was also sprayed with black plastidip to prevent future corrosion. It was mostly surface rust.
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