93 Escort Engine seizes up when bolts are tight!

[Jim@HiTek]

Hi, all. We have a '93 Escort with a 1.8L DOHC-16 engine, manual tranni. Two of the piston were damaged so we went to the yard and got a low miles 1.8L, DOHC-16, automatic tranni. The yard machanic drove the car into the shop to pull the engine.

We were told by the yard that the only change we needed to do was to take the driveplate off the new engine and replace it with the flywheel from the old engine. Then install the existing bearing, clutch, and clutch components. We did that and the new engine and old tranni meshed together without to much trouble.

Then we tried to bolt the engine and tranni together and here is where our problems started. We cannot bolt the two parts together (to the spec'ed ft-lbs) without the engine seizing. If we leave the bolts finger tight, the engine starts and runs fine without problem. We can even drive it, but we're not doing that.

Does anyone know what we missed? What is the difference (beside the obvious clutch parts) between the manual tranni engine and the automatic tranni engine? What might cause this symptom? Is there a part in the block that needs to be removed or replaced because of the manual tranni?

We have heard from some that maybe we need to take the bushing (not the pilot bearing - a bushing in the block) out of this one and replace it with a different one. The Ford dealers shop says that they can't find a bushing for this engine in their parts books.

Thanks all!!

Jim

[Jim@HiTek]

Problem Found!

This time we took out both the engine and tranni. Since we couldn't pry them apart with crow bars, had to use push bolts through the block pushing against the frame of the tranni. After it popped apart, found that we had to remove the 'adaptor' from the crank shaft (only shown in one place in the manual and we missed it). It seems to be needed to reduce the diameter of the crankshaft for the automatic tranni input shaft.

The adaptor is used between the driveplate and crankshaft only on automatic 1.8L transaxles and we didn't need it for a manual tranni with a flywheel. It interferred slightly with and ruined the pilot bearing ($16 new at Mazda). That's all that seems to be bad so far.

Whee, this job sure was fun.

Happy motoring all!