So I have been holding out on you all a little. Since Father's day I have done several posts on how busy we have been and given you the details of our time spent but I was leaving out one little factor. For Fathers day Kevin got a pretty big gift... a 2004 ford explorer 4.6 liter SOHC motor for the Thunderbird. With that said during all this busy time a good bit of that was interlaced with Kevin spending a good amount of time in the garage working on the Thunderbird. So all of you non car lovers out there bear with me as I tell this story...
All of the above pictures were the calm before the storm. This was day 1 of the great take down. Kevin had ambitions to get the exhaust off and transmission out and quickly hit road bump number one. Before we left Anderson Kevin had high flow cats put on the exhaust and quickly realized that they welded the exhaust hangers to the frame of the car among other things making it very difficult to remove. As the pictures show the end result of day 1 was exhaust hanging off the back of the car and one frustrated McMahan...that was it.
Luckily day 2 went a little more smoothly; exhaust made it off and the transmission out and the husband was much happier :-).
I don't know about you but I am not really sure what I am looking at in the above pictures. I do know that they are the end results of day 3 aka the removal of all the accessory parts to make ready for the removal of the engine.
And day 4 ended in great success - old engine out!
Day 5: part retrieval - taking what was needed off the old motor and putting them on the new motor.
Day 6: prepared new engine for install of springs and cams when they arrive.
Day 7: installation of new springs and cams, now all that the engine needs is exhaust manifolds and it can go in...
Day 8: finally the new engine is in, now everything else has to go back on. Count down to start up time.
Day 9: FINALLY all back together... and time to crank her up...
After all that hard work, a few bumps and bruises, cuts and scrapes... after a few sputters and chugs, she is running good. Kevin is now just ready to get her to a dyno and track. I am sure you will be hearing more about the Thunderbird and our excursions in the near future.
2 comments:
WOW -- Kevin really HAS been busy doing this AND all your weekend family adventures. Glad it all worked out without too many "memorable moments". Now he and Chase CAN go to that car guy event in Detroit in August!! Something like 40K cars and a million people attending!!! ENJOY!! Grammie ... Paw Paw says he will be calling
Well it's about damn time! ;) Too bad it took moving to MI and losing a nice detached three car garage to do it. But I know Kevin's been wanting to do that for a long time and I am happy it finally came to fruition. I heard "rumors" that this was going on and I'm glad it seems to have happened without too many issues. And I know with projects that big there are ALWAYS some unexpected issues that cause frustration.
And Jenny, I think you did a fine job of telling/showing the story (even if you weren't 100% sure of some of the vocabulary, lol)! Congrats to you both and best of luck with the dyno and track! That big old beast of a car will certainly surprise a few unsuspecting drivers.
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