Ok shoot me this is more 4.6 related than it is maverick. BUt i do own one so dont hate to much. ANYWAY. I had my 95vert for a little over a year. LOVED IT( some mods done previously) so when i got married, my wife decided she wanted one too but auto. So i agreed just to get rid of the malibu she had that had already been through a motor or two. We found an 03 gt convertible at a great price. Took-er home blah blah. Made a few passes at the local strip to see what-up....14.6 at 91mph ok..so lifes just PERFECT? right?? WRONG. exactly 90 days after we purchased the pig we were headed home from the bank after dropping 3k on our loan from the sale of the malibu when.....all of a sudden! BOOOOOOOM . It took a major ****. Popped the hood, to find an entire coil missing with pieces everywhere and not a drop of coolant in 'er. well, come to find out, the crossover on the intake, where it bolts from underneath the intake, had split on the 1/4 inch of composite intake material and lost all the coolant, but it never ran hot? sensor is in the crossover-there was no coolant temp to sense! TRASH. So the teardown begins, found #3 combustion chamber split..(how the coil shot out) ordered two new heads, gasket kit and a pro products aluminum intake, plenum, and tb. And a full set of msd coils and new plugS and timing chains. Installed...... cranked...it was missing. BAD like i didnt change anything. pissed of at the money i wasted, it was time to delve furthur into this whore. motor came out, found #3 piston ring lands smashed together. After much digging into my now shallow pockets i managed to find a low mile used 98 long block. my idea was to retro fit the short block, use my PI heads and make a few more horsies. well i got lazy and this project moved to the side. I bought my wife a beater to drive while i fixxed the stang- a 2nd gen SHO lol. More story too come later im hungry and headed for TEXAS-ROADHOUSE!
been there done that.. I have built and torn apart a bunch of 4.6's I had a 2000 that I spun 7 out of the 8 rod bearings in. If the intake in the 03 was all plastic then it probably wasn't the original motor, it should have had the aluminum crossover intake by then. I kinda miss my ol GT, but I miss my 92 turbo hatch more Here's some pics of the build of my 4.6 on my old site : www. freewebs. com/ascholtes/ (take the spaces out before and after "freewebs" )
All i can say is that is why im not a fan of the 4.6. Sorry for the bad luck . Im affraid the sho is a b#####d to work on but a neat car, congratulations.
it had and aluminum crossover, what it bolted to was plastic with a formed o-ring. i loved our sho. more story to come
Ok back to the story...A few months went by and i decided to pick back up work on the stang. The plan was to swap the new PI heads and new intake over and have er runnin. So i pulled one head of the new junkyard mota, and there to my surprise... mud. yes mud, in every cyl. how it got there im not sure. Probably went through RITA. i am from southwest louisiana. anyway, the mud was well past the rings and my 90 day warranty with the junkyard had expired. YAY i decided for a "stock" rebuild , Tore it down bottom end was ok other than normal bearing wear. The bearings were pretty easy to find. New rings...... next to impossible. they were 80 bucks for a set of 2 cylinders worth.. yeah 320 bucks!!! well, fast-forward a little while and i had-er rebuilt ready to put back in. WEEEEELLLL my buddie, who was like my brother, that was helping me....well....we had a misunderstanding between us. ok, between our wives and next thing i know my best friend packed up his tools and his Maverick that we were building at my house, and hauled ass. ok back to real story, so i put the new motor in and get it all buttoned up and topped of the fluids. cranked er up.....VROOOM! She sounded great!! let her run to make sure everything was working properly. then after approx 5 min...pING PING POW!!!!!!!!!!!! Something broke, she started missing again. and it was obviously mechanical, pulled pass cam cover off and found a follower popped of! ive seen that before on high miled 4.6s so i reinstalled it thinking the lash adjuster hadnt had enough pressure. cranked again with the cam cover off.. maybe 10 seconds went by when the same follower popped out. NOW IM PISSED OFF! then it got even better! i looked at the valve spring on the lost follower and it was slightly compressed like the valve was bent. more story, and "the question" to come! i have to go to bed!
