Planning a rebuild (over time)

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aheeejd

aheeejd

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4.7 V8
Well didn't progress as far as I wanted to. When I took old engine out I wrapped a sling, doubled up with one end around right side exhaust manifold & the other end around the bottleneck of the timing cover where top radiator goes. I'll see if I got pics of that, anyway I didn't want to lift from those points with new engine. I saw a couple YouTube videos & someone used the 2 studs sticking up from the heads, I didn't have those studs until the day I grabbed fuel rail from the junkyard. I grabbed a fuel rail off a grand Cherokee & there were the studs. Now their in my motor. The studs looked to me as if they would just fold in, so off to the hardware store to grab a piece of angle iron. Made a little bracket to go from stud to stud. While there I grabbed a couple nuts & washers for the studs. Of course I grabbed wrong size. Back to store with the stud & now all set. So I made the bracket & remembered I still had to fill front differential, gear oil & 30° sucked.

Sorry I ramble.
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So I rigged up engine hoist, started going or looking for bolts for motor mount (again take tons of pics, & label everything, everything, every bolt) it helps big time. Oops, forgot flex plate, clean up bolts, install with lock-tite blue. Then my mother in law stopped by for a visit & she never comes here so visited a bit & now its dark & cold.

Tomorrow morning, engine is on hoist & that's the first thing I'm ready to do, is drop it in. I can't lay under there trying to line up bell housing, with flashlights. Tomorrow will be cold again but I'll be able to see.
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That's the bracket I made. The back of the motor will want to dip down because of the cab forward design, & I'll achieve that using a ratchet strap, more pics tomorrow. Yikes, that pic came out sideways......
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aheeejd

aheeejd

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So Saturday came, & my dad showed up at 9:30 am to help. God bless him, he's 70, just moved back to New England after spending 20+ years out on the left coast. Its about 30° & I know he's freezing. But it took some doing but got motor in, motor mounts bolted up & got a couple bell housing bolts started, will tackle again tomorrow.
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aheeejd

aheeejd

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And of course forgot to put on dust shield. So I get it in, & realized the hole for starter is on wrong side. Very frustrating. Fixed that, & had trouble with 1 of the bigger bell housing bolts, it just wasn't seating all the way. 30 ft/lbs already. Thought something might be pinched between. I reef on it & a little piece of cast aluminum falls down to me. F -this, off to hardware store & bought a couple shorter bolts (flange bolts to be exact). Bolted together, torque to 30 ft/lbs & proceed to starter.

Still have to put on structural cover. & then I can move to putting stuff on engine, fuel rail, intake, hook up wires, hoses & start this bad ass.

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aheeejd

aheeejd

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Things have been coming along slowly with the cold & just the holiday season. 4 stepchildren, 3 of which are girls, "can we go to the mall".
Anyway, Wednesday evening I changed out filters on the transmission. I say filters cause I have tranny cooler & that has its own return filter, it was probably 11 pm, cold, me laying on the tar & I stripped out 2 bolts. Walked away, went to bed. Thursday I installed intake, I got from a junkyard, mine was nasty, filthy. The one from junkyard in exceptionally good condition. $75, good score there.

Need to install fuel rail, hook up wires & then try & fix tranny pan. I didn't add tranny oil because I may need to drop pan again. I bought a tap that I will try & clean up the threads & hopefully that'll be enough to fix. If not I bought next size up tap & will probably have to drop pan for that. I don't want to attempt to start it until I fix pan. I mean the torque converter will spin, where's that oil gonna go. But I'm so close to starting, without radiator etc. Just want to see if it will fire. I plan on pulling fuel relay, & turn over until I build oil pressure, then install relay & let her rip. That way I won't have a dry start. To be continued

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aheeejd

aheeejd

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Things are going ok. Great actually because I don't know if it was just late, I was tired or what. But the 2 tranny pan bolts that I thought I stripped out are now tight.

Motor almost ready to start, but I can't for the life of me remember where the long end of the negative battery cable goes. You got the terminal & right on the fender is 1 lead. Then off the other side of the terminal 2 cables come off, 1 is bolted to the frame right near front of tire. The 3rd long one I cant remember, please help someone.

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RonJon '06

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I'd think it would bolt onto the front of the engine block, at least that's where it goes on the Hemi. Good to see you're almost finished. :waytogo:
 
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aheeejd

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Yeah but I'm just not seeing where to mount. I'll take a pic

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aheeejd

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This is the cable, hope you can make something out of pic,
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aheeejd

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Merry Christmas everybody

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RonJon '06

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Did some searching and it looks like it bolts to the block on the passenger's side along with two other wire bundles. Look below the header near the front O2 sensor.
 
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aheeejd

aheeejd

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Did some searching and it looks like it bolts to the block on the passenger's side along with two other wire bundles. Look below the header near the front O2 sensor.
Ok thank you will check it out

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aheeejd

aheeejd

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Yeah the passenger side isn't going to work as it won't reach.

Its stuff like this where again, even if you think its simple & you'll remember, you won't, possibly so take the time to label everything you can. Today just the heater hoses, I was like which one goes where. It held me up, (granted not long) but it shouldn't have. I basically went by how it looked, if I put the lower one up top you can tell it wouldn't look right.

But happy to say, success, engine started. Turned it over without the fuel pump fuse & the fuel pump relay. It actually wanted to run, so I turned key back off. Did this a few times & sure enough I saw life in the oil pressure gauge. Plugged fuse & relay back in & it fired right up. Don't even think I let it run more then a minute cause no coolant hooked up, but wanted to make sure it fired.

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aheeejd

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Just took it for a ride around the block. At first I started it up & had very high idle & brake light was on & pedal was stiff like frozen. Amazing how things are tied together because I shut it down after I let it get to temperature, & figured out I left the master cylinder breather tube off. The one that goes to the intake, & there is a little nipple next to that. Put nipple on where it goes then break breather & idled beautiful. And brakes are fine.

Need a front end alignment for sure as I changed the steering rack. But it sure feels great to be 99% done. Still have to top off tranny, (need more fluid), bleed out steering pump/rack, & basically put grill on & grill guard (maybe a bit of paint for that. I'll keep on posting here, take some pics of finished product etc.....

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aheeejd

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aheeejd

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Hauled old engine to be shipped back to Accurate Engines. Truck running great, still haven't put that ground anywhere, I'll figure it out. Have a noise, sounds like its coming from power steering pump, need to figure that out.

Been taking it super easy on engine, not going over 65 MPH, not stomping on it etc.
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aheeejd

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Well I've got over 1000 miles on the motor. At 511 miles I did 1st oil change & decided to go with Royal Purple. I wanted a Wix oil filter but the store I stopped at (Advanced Auto) did not have any in stock so I went with the K & N filter. Expensive oil change at $70 but hey. I'll look for deals of RP online & whatnot.

Truck is running great. I think I have a short in the wiring that goes to the oil pressure sending unit. Sometimes when I start truck the needle just lays there. Turn truck off, turn back on & presto, right up where its always been. I should have taken the time to clean off the wires & connectors as it is coated in oil from just time, leaks & age. Don't forget, this is an 03, just with a new engine.

And I think I am cursed with power steering pump. The thing leaks from somewhere. With my old motor I was always adding fluid as my steering rack leaked. So when I pulled motor I changed the rack, bought a brand new pump, brand new hoses. And I've got a leak somewhere. Its been to cold here, like 5° to -3° so I'm waiting for 35°+ to crawl under & figure this out.

But yeah just wanted to update a little, really running nicely.

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aheeejd

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Things are going ok. Great actually because I don't know if it was just late, I was tired or what. But the 2 tranny pan bolts that I thought I stripped out are now tight.

Motor almost ready to start, but I can't for the life of me remember where the long end of the negative battery cable goes. You got the terminal & right on the fender is 1 lead. Then off the other side of the terminal 2 cables come off, 1 is bolted to the frame right near front of tire. The 3rd long one I cant remember, please help someone.

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Lol, wasn't sure if I could quote my own post, anyway, I finally figured out where this goes, it bolts on down by the oil trough. I found this out by replacing the trough as I bent old one when removing engine, one of the bolts I could see the groves on it left from the lug on the end of cable. Figured I'd post this & maybe it'll help someone down the road. I know I've gotten lots of help from old threads/posts.

May as well update what's been happening. The issue that I had with oil sending unit, was the sending unit itself, bought another one after I cleaned up wire & connector, used die-electric grease & issue was still happening. So I bought new sensor & now problem is fixed. I was really getting sick of starting truck, needle laying flat, turn truck off, start back up & it would then work. Now works each start.

Oh & the leaking power steering (all new), it ended up being the reservoir. I took pump (pump & reservoir 1 unit) off & took back to O'Reillys & exchanged it for another & now is all good.

And like I said in earlier post, I've chosen to go with Royal Purple & K & N filter. And I just randomly chose to change oil every 7500 miles. Is that way to early & I can go every 10 000 miles? Any opinions on that.

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Ian_Olivas

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It might seem like fun, but you are lucky to have 240,000 on a 4.7 without major problems.

I have never completely rebuilt a 4.7, but I've been all over one :)

From what I have read there are like 3 different sizes of crank journal bearings, and some times the wrong ones can be sold to you even from an experienced dealer or on line shop.

You will need head work which you cannot do yourself, you will need a bunch of special tools like ring compressors and plastic gauges and micrometers to read the plastic gauges.

Not meaning to sound discouraging but a dodge 4.7 is not the motor to start on if you want to practice rebuilding.

But if you are brave and have time plus some money to spend it can be rewarding!

Curiosity... how did you get that many miles on it and retain oil pressure? Did you buy it used and someone had replaced motor parts or?? I have only seen a hand full of 4.7's that run at all close to 200,000. Mine will be one but I did heads and oil pump already. Turned over 177,777 today have pics lol.
My 4.7 is at 215k miles on it and it runs strong like it's brand new. 9nky thing I'm starting to burn a lot of oil on it. I did an oil change last weekend and I got less than 2 quarts out of it but my oil pressure was fine the whole time so I'm guessing it's distributing the oil perfectly throughout the engine. I'll need to constantly check oil level and fill it bit a rebuild is on my list for hopefully the end of the year
 
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aheeejd

aheeejd

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My 4.7 is at 215k miles on it and it runs strong like it's brand new. 9nky thing I'm starting to burn a lot of oil on it. I did an oil change last weekend and I got less than 2 quarts out of it but my oil pressure was fine the whole time so I'm guessing it's distributing the oil perfectly throughout the engine. I'll need to constantly check oil level and fill it bit a rebuild is on my list for hopefully the end of the year
I didn't burn any oil but I did have issues with oil pressure gauge, I ran hot shots sliction eliminator & i swear that product got me many more miles before engine finally quit.

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