The Falcon - XR4Ti

Got the motor taken apart yesterday.

Good news! Only thing I could find wrong was the top compression rings on cylinders 3 & 4 had snapped. The inside of the motor looks really clean, no spun bearings, no weird wear marks. I can still see all the cross hatching, and there's no lip on the top of the cylinder walls. Looks really, really good for a 254k mile motor, especially considering the abuse I gave it as a teen, and the abuse I know it saw before I got it. I'm really glad the snapped compression rings didn't score the cylinder walls.

Need to get it cleaned up some, then it's off to the machine shop. I've got 4 months until I move, it has to be running and driving before then. Hopefully I can fix at least the majority of the big problems before summer.

One funny thing, I tapped divots into the pistons to mark which number they were, only to realize as I took the motor apart that they are numbered both on the rods and caps already. I guess I'm just used to the duratec in my focus where nothing is marked. Everything is factory marked on this motor, number and orientation. It's practically fool-proof after rebuilding that awful duratec.