acarney

HOW THE **** DO YOU GET THIS DAMN PIN IN?! I removed the hose clamp & two bolts for the pipe to the intercooler and can shift that maybe half an inch side to side and up or down but there is still NO WAY to squize my hand between the coolent pipes running to the passenger side and what I think is a sway bar. I still can't get a socket aligned to get this bolt in, I'm worried I'm going to strip it because I really have to put a lot of force on it the first two or three turns... Then I stop because I'm worried. This has got to be the worst designed thing in the world. I spent 9pm to 2am last night fighting with it and now two hours tonight. I'm almost to the point of towing the god damn car to the dealer & maxing out my card for $3000 for this service...

Or anyone want $200 near 99354 to come over and put this god damn bolt in?

tester123

Is it possible to try it with a long extension with a "flex" or universal joint and 10mm socket? that's what I did on my 4.2. Search the forums, maybe someone already posted on how they did it on your engine...

I just checked, the manuals are useless on this. I am still thinking driver side wheel well maybe an option... doesn't help not being in front of it.. to guide you any better.

acarney

I finally got it after I "made" and extension for a mirror and an old toothbrush to clean the socket as good as I could. Then using like a 18 inch extension with a swivel socket I went in through the wheel well (which I had been doing all night last night) and pulled the turbo pipe down as much as I could while trying to drive in the tool. This helped get JUST to the angle I needed to get the tool to seat even a little info the threads. Then I got out from under the car and leaned hard as heck on it and drove it in. Scary as heck because every two or three turns it got REALLY tight but I kept driving it (hoping I wasn't stripping it because well I don't think there is fixing that...) and finally it bottomed out about three threads from being all the way in.

Checked the crank and it wouldn't even rock back and forth... Though the arrow is no longer perfectly lined up with the notch on the pully. Looked down directly on top it looks lined up, BUT that little arrow is offset to the drivers side by like an inch or something and if you shift your head to look directly over the arrow, then you can tell it shifted a little bit. Both the big circles on the sprockets still look perfectly level and pointing inward so I'm hoping it's just a fluke or something... Either way tomorrow morning I use the breaker bar to get to that seal behind there...

If the damn access plug wasn't at a slight angle then it wouldn't have been so horrible from the wheel well, but the fact that by going in the wheel well puts you almost level with the access hole BUT it's angled down and you can't get the socket at the right angle because the Fing turbo pipe is in the way!!

I jammed it in with a straight socket, VERY gently pulled that out (after about 75 times of the tool falling right back out) then super gently fed in the swivel socket, backed it out a tread or two and tried to let gravity and the swivel drop it to the right angle... Gosh this is a horrible step!

acarney

I still think it's a horrible design and horrible service guide. They should say how long of an extension you need and where to access it. Also, how hard would it have been to engineer a kind of guide that would ensure you were at the right angle?! Just one hole at the wheel well and one hole in a bracket near the engine so even if you're doing it blind (which you almost have too) you'll be lined up perfectly...

jseklund

I am sorry I didn't see this last night - I would have pulled the piping out completely to get it out of the way. Then a couple of straight extensions through the wheel well, if you find the right angle, will go straight to that hole. It also helps to slide further under the car than you think you need to, to get behind the frame, and look at it from another angle. You can get your hand in there and screw it in to get it started if the pipes are removed and you find the angle. You just have to slide under the car more than you think.

Kris Hansen

How do you remove the bolt for the crank so you can replace the front seal, without locking the crank?

acarney

How do you remove the pipe completely? I can't even see where the turbo is from below the car and I can't follow the pipe more then an inch or two above and away from the oil pan... I was worried it would be impossible to actually connect the pipe again if I completely removed it but I couldn't even figure out how. I just removed the two bolts from the oil pan and the hose clamp near the intercooler (where the metal pipe connects to the rubber one)

acarney

Beats me, that's why I spent hours fighting with this, especially when I saw a bit of oil seep out the first time I turned the crank by hand a full revolution or two :-/

SloopJohnB@mac.com

It's the nature of the beast with engines shoehorned into spaces smaller than an F150 pickup.
Same with intercooler plumbing.
There is no premium or user benefit associated with maintainability…Ford tried it with the Maverick in the 70's and guess how that worked out! User/owner serviceability is a joke. Today's driver's want automatics, electronic connectivity, and apparently automatic driving so they can text and yap without the music of a V12 engine in their ears. I speak from the standpoint of an graduate engineer in maintainability engineering with the (former) US Army Materiel Command…maintainability is a driver in acquisition cost, yet not as prime a driver as performance.

You have a relatively high performance twin turbocharged dual overhead cam 4 valve per cylinder V6….arguably the epitome of engine development for the masses…a relatively high initial cost and high maintenance cost vehicle with almost 100hp/L (even though that's low these days for a forced induction engine) and 10+ years old.

It is what it is.

jseklund

You need to slide under the car more and see it all from different angles. You can follow the metal tube back to a rubber hose that connects to the turbo with a band clamp. You can use a long screwdriver to unscrew the band clamp (It may have to be spun around to get access, which will take force, pry with the screwdriver carefully). It will then pop off. Putting it back on is a bit tricky and will cause some swearing in many situations.

My hands are fairly large, but not huge and I can reach up in there no problem ...but it isn't from the position you think. Normally I have my chest almost directly under the subframe when I reach in.

I've done this on an 01 and an 04, and while it is a bit of a pain, it isn't a multiple hour job by any means (maybe adds 30-45 minutes to the break down and reassembly if you have problems) - it is pretty smooth once you realize what you have to do.

I have been at your level of frustration before with these cars, so I know how stupid these engineers are looking to you right now - but I also know that sometimes if I take a long break and come back to the car, what once was hard becomes easy once I was rested, fresh and had a clear mind. I've spent hours on so many things on this car before just to come back the next day or a week later and have it take me 10 minutes with little effort.