Engine Prep

OK. I finally did it. I pulled the trigger on a Coyote engine. Due to the amazing price difference I decided to go with a 2012 F150 Coyote. I know, I know... it doesn't have as much horsepower but come on now. Is that 40 HP really going to make a difference for this daily driver? The truck this came out of was hit on the side. It only had 7,000 miles on the computer. I was able to get the engine, wiring harness, computer, motor mounts, alternator, A/C compressor and mass air meter. It was an automatic truck so I will need to replace the flex plate with a flywheel in the future. All that for $4,200 (with some labor paid to my friend who got this engine for me).

I have a buddy who has used these engines in many different machines. He is currently taking the exact engine I have, supercharging it and putting it in fairly new Toyota Tacoma for a customer. Why? Just because I guess. He said these engines are perfect for dropping into project cars like mine. I think I totally agree with him.

We had a 45 day warranty on the engine. My friend worked hard to jury rig up what he had to in order to get it started. He fabricated some short pipes with small mufflers so that we could hear if there is anything weird going on inside the block. That thing sounded awesome! Noting to be concerned with with that motor.
Here's a video of the engine running. Not a great video, but you get the idea.

After verifying it was a good one I loaded it up in my 65 F100 and brought it home. Here's a few shots of the engine in the bed.

I then spent the afternoon carefully getting it out of the truck and strapping it down on an engine stand. I decided not to bolt it down since I want to put the new bellhousing I got from Quciktime on the engine and get it ready for the transaxle as soon as I can. My plan is to get the transaxel bolted up and then cherry pick it into the Pantera. I'll then block it into position and get ready to fabricate the mounting brackets for the engine and the transaxle. That'll be a separate post when I get to that part of the project.

Just so I would have this for safe keeping, here a shot of the QR code for the serial number of the engine.

First think I wanted to do was to see if what people were saying about the intake was true. As you might imagine, there won't be a lot of room between the fire wall and the front of the engine. The intake has the throttle and mass air meter right on the front of the motor. I read in a couple places the intake is symmetrical and could be reversed so that the throttle faces the back of the engine. I decided to try it for myself. Here's the before shots of the engine.

There are 10 bolts holding on the intake. Six of them are 8mm and four of them (the ones holding the fuel rails in place) are 10mm. In less than 15 minutes I had the intake off and was ready to bolt it back on again. As I set the intake in place I found a small tab that had to be ground off in order to get it to line up properly.

You can see the tab hitting the port in the middle of the picture below.

I took my angle grinder and made quick work of this plastic tab. Here's what it looked like after the work was done.

Here's the finished project. It looks really great.