Engine Repair & Cleanup: September 2003
ZEBRA3 WAS DEVELOPING A COUPLE NAStY HABITS.
The first was minor and was corrected quickly.
After the engine was at operating temperature and the car was parked it would tinkle a bit of coolant out of the radiator. This was quickly remedied by a aftermarket overflow bottle added and painted black to hide its existence. Problem solved.
The second problem was quite a bit more serious. There was an oil leak at the top of the timing cover. I cleaned the oil off a couple of times but it always came back shortly after.
This was not acceptable since I planned to drive this car to Evansville Ind.(400 mile round trip) Within a few weeks and a uncontrolled oil leak was not a good thing to bring on the trip with me.
Thinking the oil leak was the timing cover gasket I proceeded to repair it. After removal and inspection of the timing cover I found a rather large crack across its top so it had to be replaced. Thinking this was a small investment I walked up to the parts counter at my place of employment, a ford dealer and requested a new one. The nice counterman said that will be 280 dollars and we will have it this afternoon. Whoa I said, I’ll figure something else out!
Back to Ebay I went and found an aftermarket new part for 49 dollars. During this repair I figured I would clean all front engine parts removed and repaint them.
Then I got to thinking, if I make all these front parts look new the rest of the engine will look crappy. So I decided to repaint the valve covers and the air cleaner assembly to match.
Then I thought some more, If I have all these engine parts off at the same time it would be a perfect opportunity to replace the camshaft with an aftermarket grind. So, I ordered a new Crane Energizer cam kit from Jegs and it arrived promptly. Only problem was the new cam would not go in the engine. I reinstalled the old cam with no problem but the new one just would not go in.
So I called Crane and questioned them as to what might be the problem. They told me my old cam was warped and damaged the cam bearings to the point a new straight cam would not fit. I hung up the phone and sighed knowing I had just received a healthy portion of bullcrap.
I ordered a second identical cam kit from Jegs and it went in without a problem. It was their cam that wasn’t straight, not my old one.
After the mysterious cam incident was over everything else went back into place. The car is running and back to normal now with a little more power than it had, and looks better too.