Quote Originally Posted by Luva65wagon View Post
Jeff and I just dropped his motor (a 200) off at the machine shop yesterday for the build we're doing on his - and the shop foreman was beside himself because they are so far behind. He said so many shops folded over the past couple years that he's getting more than he can handle. He said, I hope you don't expect this anytime soon. So taking yours in for an inspection would likely require a shop with time available for this. Just from the looks of the goo in the rocker area this motor is probably long in the tooth.

That bolt doesn't look like the correct bolt for the rocker assy. I just sorted all the bolts for the abovementioned Jeff motor and it looks like all the bolts are the same and will have the narrow portion above the thread. I'll post an image of what they're supposed to look like a little later. They're out soaking in the cleaning juice right now.

Rinke is correct about the lift point on these motors. Ford just had two big hooks that wrapped up under the intake log and went into those two holes you'll find and up it went. I'm probably going to rig up a similar lifter for Jeff's swap.

Will be following your progress, so keep us posted.

I know these are late replies but the bolt in the picture was actually a head bolt, not rocker assembly btw, that's why it didn't look right.


I ended up using 4 lifting points for the install, which felt about 10X more stable than I had done for the pull. Unlike the pull, with 4 lifting points that leveler actually did it's job very well and things really couldn't have gone smoother! My kids were all at work that day so I was really on my own, but it was very manageable, and couldn't have gone smoother, especially compared to the very difficult and precarious pull.


Also I figured out I wouldn't need to remove my accessories if I just held the chains away from the side of the engine. So I cut some scrap rebar down to a useful length, and ground the edges of the rebar a little bit so that the ends would snug into a chain link in each direction, like so:


hoist1.jpg


That way I was able to tip the engine front/back as needed with less chance of displacing/breaking accessories.


Without help, it took me about an hour just to get the hoist moved into place in front of the Ranchero. With one of my kids around we could have done it in minutes! But I have limits to physical exertion so I had to go very slow and careful. Often I had to stop and hook up a strap to my electric car when the hoist would get stuck and I needed to budge it a couple inches. Obviously I couldn't just straight-out tow the hoist into place... even pulling from the base the hoist is not meant for towing and would likely topple! However with a nudge here and there, and getting out of the car to manually wrestle it some more, about a dozen times in and out of the car, eventually I had it into perfect position:


hoist2.jpg


The hoist itself looks crooked in that picture but I was able to visually confirm that the engine itself was ideally aligned, pointing right down the center of the engine bay. And it had to be because once I got the Ranchero up underneath it, it would be impossible to get the electric car close enough to nudge an adjustment. And I might not be able to physically move the hoist by myself if it needed to move again.


Well all that preparation paid off... it was so perfectly aligned that when I rolled the Ranchero up, I didn't even have to make a last minute steering adjustment, and both legs of the hoist cleared the suspension on both sides, even though there was barely any clearance to be had!


hoist3.jpg
hoist4.jpg
hoist5.jpg


That was June 16. By the next day I had hooked up enough stuff to fire that engine up and take the 61 on a little test drive for the very first time! So I officially declared 6-17-2021 to be the RBD of this 1961 Ranchero. Re-Birth-Day. Yeah I think I made that one up.


Anyway it's been over 30 years since I've driven one of these and I forgot just how big the steering wheel is! Like *comically* large, like a steering wheel in a school bus. Man it's just been so much fun to experience these memories again...


I've been fixing up this and that ever since, and got the hood back on, and drove it to town for the first highway drive. I found out you can print off 3-day trip permits right from home now! So I didn't have to wait until the licensing office was open, I got a trip permit printed on my home printer on a SUNDAY of all things.


When the online trip-permit form asked what license plate was on the vehicle, it said that if there was no plate then I should type NOPLATE into the space. But I realized in that moment that I already have the perfect license plates for this car! My own original vanity plates from the 80s... I had bought vanity plates to go on dad's original Ranchero back in the 80s when he gave me that very first car, and these plates haven't been used in decades. But now that I'm trying to rebuild a mirror twin of my dad's Ranchero, well what could be better? I wasn't sure where they were at first but I found them sitting on a shelf in a stack of many license plates I had saved from over the years:


rancheroplaterear.jpg


As a bonus, this plate has an 87 sticker, which helps date the plate as a first year issue of the new Mt Rainier design! I've never really been motivated to put these personalized plates back into circulation before, but with this project it just seems perfect. Especially when I drove to my dad's house to show him this work-in-progress and he got to see his own name sprawled on the front and back of it!