Zetec Engine Build Wrap Up (Part I: The Lead-up)

I apologize that I have not posted any further commentary regarding my engine build on here. I'm not really sure who all is following it, and I'm also not really sure where I left off last. I believe that I had left off with getting the headwork done...

Once the headwork was done, I was debating on what cams to put in the car. My initial thought was to use a huge cam setup, that looks really good on paper. 300° of duration and 0.450" of lift on the intake and 290° od duration and 0.381" lift for the exhaust side. If you want to pump a lot of air quickly, these cams would certainly do the trick. However, after talking to my tuner, we decided for a car that isn't going to be trailered anywhere, the Crower Stage 2 cams would be more than sufficient (280°/0.413" intake, 276°/0.393" exhaust). When the cams came, I quickly set to work setting the valve lash on them. The first thing I noticed was that there was going to be contact between the cam lobe and the head material surrounding the lifter. This was not unexpected, so I pulled out the trusty Dremel tool and hacked off a bunch of excess aluminum (weight savings to boot).

For those who are working on a project similar to this with a solid lifter head, you need to remember that when your machine shop does a valve job, or has to replace a valve seat, the distance between the top of the valve and the cam is going to decrease (by thousandths of an inch). Ford only has certain size lifters that you use to adjust the lash on the cams, and with the valve job, I was at or below the smallest size offered by Ford. So I pulled out the trusty dremel again and started shaving material off of the bottom of all of the lifters until they were within spec. Just as I was finishing up the intake side, I got a little bit sloppy and as I was tightening down the cam for final measurements, I mis-torqued the cam and it snapped (they're a very high-carbon steel, which makes them pretty brittle). Time to call Crower for a new cam. Fortunately, the Focus shares its engine with a whole host of other vehicles, including the Escort ZX2 (which has variable cam timing on the exhaust side, for emissions purposes). This allowed me to order just an intake cam, instead of having to get a whole new set of intake/exhaust cams. That put me behind a week, and I was planning on installing the engine in two weeks. I called it quits for the evening and the next evening went out to finish the exhaust side. When the replacement intake cam arrived, the lash was not significantly changed (it can vary from cam to cam and head to head, based on machining tolerances and storage conditions.

That pretty well wraps up the assembly of the engine, so in anticipation, I had scheduled a week and a half off of work, starting on July 31st (Thursday) until August 9th (today). With my work schedule, I have to plan it just so, since I work every third weekend. Fortunately, no one had taken that time off before me, so I was good. I had been accruing all of the fluids and miscellaneous items that I thought I would need, so as not to be rushing around on the Thursday before. Thursday was a rush anyhow. I had to run around and find an engine hoist (key element to engine removal and installation), which I ended up just buying a 2 ton hoist from Rural King Ohio. So if anyone in the Wooster/Northeast Ohio area needs to borrow an engine hoist, I'm renting it out for a flat fee of $30 per use (I do have a guy who's interested in buying it, too, so I'll end up having spent less than what it would have cost to rent one for 4 days).

A fellow Focus Forum friend from Michigan offered to come down and lend a hand from start to finish and I had a few local Focus people come lend a hand as they could on Saturday. Chris (from Michigan) arrived about 12:13 on Thursday night, so we stood around in the garage for an hour and looked at what we were about to get ourselves into. Then we decided that we would head into the house and call it a night. The next 48 hours were going to be interesting...