94 Ford Escort 1.9L Engine Rebuild Issue

[Intuit]

Curious, what is "normal" oil pressure for this unmodified engine ? Mid-forties ??

Any way to verify that the gauge is connected/routed and functioning properly ?

Are there oil pressure senders that mount between the oil filter and block ?

EDIT: Just now seeing that there's another page of posts here.

[Intuit]

The hydraulic roller lifters get at least some (if not all) their lubrication via two tiny holes on near-opposite sides of the lifter bore. With the lifter removed, you should be able to see them.

[12Ounce]

Are you sure that the oil pressure is after the filter and not before? I don't know ... just curious.

You are obviously doing some good work, and study, as you go on this repair. You are correct in making sure oil flows to all points that it should ...(but how about the crank journals and throws?) ... keep looking. I don't have any oil distribution diagrams for this engine either. Compressed air might be handy for analysis and cleaning. Are you using new bolts each time you remove/install the head? ... getting expensive!

I often use 40w oil ... in fact, I just bought several gallons of Mobil1 0w-40 for hot weather use. I don't think you would see much pressure drop if you changed to 30w ... something else is going on here. Of course, the new pump is part of the issue ... but I would not expect cold oil pressures over 80psi if the arteries are all open. On a well maintained engine, in stop-and-go traffic, summertime with ac on ... I would guess the pressure could easily drop to 20psi, or less, at idle.

[hakachukai]

I pulled the engine again last night to double check it.

The main artery is perfectly clear. There is nothing in it.
The 5 sub arteries that lube the crank are also perfectly clear.

The crankshaft's oil veins are also perfectly clear.



I couldn't see the artery that oils the head, but I did a lot of testing on the head yesterday. It's getting tons of oil flow!

I also verified that if I remove any of the lifters the oil pressure falls from 60 psi to 20 psi...
If I remove the cam pulley bolt, the oil pressure drops to almost 0 (cause the cam is hollow).

The head isn't clogged, I just misunderstood how to rockers were getting oiled.


The ticking sound turned out not to be a valve at all. One of the little retainer clips is getting snagged on the lifter some times. I need to fix that.

I shot a video of all of this stuff too. I'll edit the video and post it later.

[12Ounce]

So maybe a engine firing is in your near future ....?

[hakachukai]

Ok, so it's been a while since I was able to work on this, but I've gotten back to it.

The oil pressure issue is solved. I went from 10W-40 to 10W-30.

So now the cold cranking pressure is about 40PSI
The cold Idle pressure is about 60PSI (until the engine gets hot)

Once the engine is hot, the oil pressure goes down to 28 PSI at idle and hits about 60 to 70PSI at 6k rpms

Now I have to figure out why I'm loosing coolant into the engine.

[hakachukai]

Ok, it's been a LONG time since I had time to work on this project because life just hasn't been co-operating with it for like a year now!

About a year ago ( when I was originally posting ) I got it running well enough to start testing it. Everything seemed normal, so I started doing RPM tests starting at 1k and working my way up to 6k.

The engine locked up :-(

So now... about a year later, I finally had time to take it apart and investigate. Suddenly... everything makes sense!

All of the work that I did worked and is still in good shape. The problem is that junk yard head that I put on there. Despite all of the work that I did to the junk yard head (decking and valve job) it still failed in a way that I didn't see coming!

The lifters failed! The roller pins loosened up and drifted out sideways. They started carving gouges in the aluminum head about 4mm wide x 10mm long x 1mm deep in the aluminum lifter bore!

This was pumping aluminum shavings straight into the oil pump and locking it up!

So now I'm working on an economic solution to fix or replace the head. I can get new lifters for $50... but that's not going to fix the gouges :-/

I also have learned that this engine is famous for randomly dropping valve seats. So I want to make sure that problem is taken care of before it happens!

[hakachukai]

Update on this project / learning experience:

I Ordered a re-manned head on Ebay from a company called Odessa Cylinder heads in Florida that had high a 99% rating for about $400 ( without core charge ). This head has the famous valve seat dropping issue fixed.

Upon receiving the head, I immediately torn it down for full inspection and found 3 lifters on the verge of going bad with the same issue! The wrist pins were already drifting from side to side by about 0.5mm to 0.75mm on 3 of the lifters!

I reported the issue and they sent me a new set of lifters in factory sealed plastic bags. One of those lifters was bad as well ( I'm still working with them, but for now I have a full set of working lifters ).

I meticulously cleaned the entire engine and all of the oil channels ( because of the previous aluminum grinding head issue ).

I bolted up the head with a new head gasket and did a leak down test. No leaks, anywhere.

Installed a new oil pump.

Re-assembled the engine and cranked it manually checking for ANYTHING that might be wrong.

I heard a little clicking sound that happened twice per crank revolution. So I removed the oil pan... then the oil pump to see if it was the pump.

Nope! It was that stupid junk yard piston that I used ( thinking that it was good )!
The skirt on the piston is severely worn out. When the crankshaft passes top dead center and bottom dead center, the piston is shifting in the cylinder and tail slapping the cylinder wall because the slipper skirt is so worn out :-/

So... lesson learned! Never again will I rebuild an engine using junkyard parts. It's just not worth it!

However I will post all of my mistakes here so that others can learn from them.

The $90 I paid for the junk yard head and the junk yard piston ended up being completely wasted time and money! Not only was is wasted, but the head also destroyed a $100 oil pump by committing aluminum grinding suicide due to bad lifters!

[12Ounce]

Wow, you've done the work! Glad you are getting to the bottom of the problems. I've had the valve seat dropping issue ... and in Spades! .... but never noticed, or even knew about, the roller pin issue in the lifter. Of course, I haven't lifted many lifters out of the head ... only a couple of noisy ones.
.
I've got two daughters driving a '97 Tracer each. I've been in each engine more than I can recall. (I almost cringe when the phone rings ..."Is someone having car problems?") ... but the engine is sweet when there are no problems; and together, the Tracers are well over 600 k miles.

[12Ounce]

I'm still puzzled by the roller-pins cutting grooves in the head. You would not think, even if they were loose, that there would be enough sideways force to cut a path in the head ... unless there is no/little oil. Did you ever locate that oil passage to the head? I think I remember it being straight up from the area of the filter.

[hakachukai]

Yes, I located and cleaned all oil passages. I also previously verified that the head had plenty of oil flow.

There was a clue to this condition that was there, but I didn't know how to recognize it yet :-/

I was unable to remove some of the lifters. They worked, but they were stuck in the head. This happens when the wrist pin drifts out sideways, carves a channel in the aluminum head and locks itself in place because the wrist pin is stuck in channel that it carved out.

If are ever evaluating a head on one of these engines, pull and check all of the lifters. If any of them are stuck... walk away!

If they are not stuck, check each and every lifter wrist pin for play. I just found 3 bad lifters on a 99 Escort 2.0L SPI engine today. There are no problems with that engine yet, but 3 of the lifters have about 1/3mm of run out in their wrist pins.

[12Ounce]

This definitely goes on my "list"!