2003 Ford Explorer V8 4.6L 8th Vin Digit W Timing Chain Set Preferred Components Inc TS10387C

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks!

This is the third and final part of the timing chain replacement on this 2003 Mercury Mountaineer. Here's a refresher of the tools that you're going to need for this procedure.

While the oil filter is nice and easy to get to, we're going to change it. As you can see we've got a drip pan underneath. Pour a little oil (I like to fill this about half way up, just so there's already some oil in it), take a little bit of that oil and put it around the gasket. Reach under and just clean up the area around where the oil filter mounts. Now you can just tighten it back up with your oil filter wrench.

Now you want to line up the slot on the harmonic balancer with the tab on the engine, and then push it back into place. I'm just going to tap it in and make sure it's all the way into place. Once it's all the way in, you can replace that bolt and just tighten it up. You can see I just have my harmonic balancer holder in, an alternative to this is before you put the valve cover on, you could have used the cam lock tool and held one of the cams in place and then torqued your harmonic balancer bolt. We just did it in a little bit different order. I'm going to put the wrench on here and I'm going to torque this to 70 foot-pounds.

We did put the water pump pulley on with just two bolts that are hand tight for right now. If you get a little lost following Mike on this next clip on how to put the belt back on, you can just refer to this belt diagram. All right, we're going to feed the belt right down through here, down onto our A/C pulley, over the tensioner, down onto our harmonic balancer, crank shaft pulley, up around the water pump, down around here, around our steering pulley. Open the alternator first, lay down on this idler pulley. Feed your lower fan shroud in, passenger's side down in first, and push it over and feed the driver's side in.

Then you want to pull the passenger's side back up and get the mounting ear below the radiator hose down there. Let's see. You kind of got to push this mounting ear down past these two transmission cooler hoses and into place. Now you just want to tighten up the bolts that go into the lower shroud. Then take the hoses and clip them back into the lower shroud. Take your radiator fan, push it back into place, and once you get it lined up just twist it back on. Use your fan pulley wrench and your adjustable wrench and just tighten up the radiator fan.

Reconnect this hose, and then line up that lower bracket and replace the 8mm bolt that holds it into place. Tighten that up. Using your pliers, slide that hose clamp back up into place and then reconnect this hose. Take your radiator hose, push it back into place, and slide the hose clamp back up. Then push this hose back onto this valve cover, and just push this back into place. Reconnect this harness and then take this harness with all of your ignition coil and injector plugs, and just push this back down onto the studs. Do not reconnect the ignition coils or injectors yet.

Push this back onto this stud, replace the nut, and tighten it up. Now replace the other two bolts in your fan pulley, and replace the four bolts in the actual radiator fan. Now you just want to tighten this down, and we'll fast-forward as Mike finishes that. Now we move to under the vehicle, and you just want to remove your oil drain plug, making sure a drip pan is underneath it. Now just let all the oil drain out.

Once it's drained out, replace your drain plug, and then just tighten it back up. Now just replace the oil with the proper amount that your vehicle takes. Then take your oil filler neck and twist it back into place. We're heading down to the last stages, we've got the oil changed, you can see all of my injectors and coils are unplugged. That's what I want right now. I'm also going to remove the fuel pump fuse, and then we're going to crank the car. Crank it 10 seconds at a time for two or three times, and that will prime the oil pump. We've got everything hooked up. We're just going to crank it for 10 seconds at a time, just twice and wait about 30 seconds in between.

Now we're just going to connect all of our coils and injectors. Push them all on until you hear them click. Take your air intake box and push it back into the side of the vehicle. Make sure nothing's in the way underneath it and then push it down into place. Now take the hose and feed underneath the line here, and then reconnect these two smaller hoses to the air intake hose, push the air intake hose back into place, reconnect this harness and then tighten up the hose clamp.

Push your fuel pump relay back into place. Alright, I'm going to cycle the key a couple of times, let the fuel pump run. Alright, so it started up and we've got good oil pressure and no noise from the engine. Now just put this bracket back onto this stud here, put the radiator hose into that bracket, and then replace the nut that holds the bracket into place. Lower the upper fan shroud back down into place, and then once you get it lined up, replace the two bolts and tighten them up. Then close those clamps back onto those lines.

Pull out the dipstick, wipe it clean, put it back in and pull it out again to check it. We may need a quart more, but, for the most part, we're all set. You want to make sure you top off your coolant because you've most likely lost some when you pulled the radiator hose free, so just fill it back to the fill line. You may not need to do this, but we also needed to top off our power steering fluid. Once your fluids are back to the right level, you're all set.

We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

This is part 2 of the 2003 Mountaineer timing chain video. At this point, we already have the timing chain cover off and we're going to show you the process from there. Here is a quick refresher of the tools you'll need.

Take your crank bolt and put it back in place. Now you'll want to rotate the engine to number 1, top dead center. There is a key way on here, that's right down there. You can rotate it counter-clockwise just by tightening up the bolt. If you bring this key way about 30 degrees from the top, and then you look here, you can see on this sprocket there's two timing marks. Then on this one over here there's the same two timing marks. This one is pointing a little more straight up. These are pointing a little more out, so that means I just need to rotate it a little further. You just want to generally get these timing marks so they're in the same position.

You may have to rotate your engine around more than a full turn to do that. Our vehicle is making a rattling at start up and under load. I believe it's because, you can see it, I can pull on this guide. I believe this tensioner has just gone bad. This one I can't move at all, but this one I can move pretty easily.

Now we're going to put this tool on to hold our right hand cam shaft in place. Let's see, this one goes on the bottom. This goes on the top. Now we just remove this bolt. As I remove that bolt, I'll take this ring off. With the cam shaft holding tool in place, I can just loosen up the bolt on the cam shaft. The sprocket as well, because we're going to replace those with the kit. Now we'll move out tool over to the other side to remove the other sprocket bolt. Now just loosen up this 18mm bolt that holds the sprocket into place. Just loosen up that bolt and remove it. Then remove the two bolts that hold in the tensioner. We'll fast-forward as Mike does this. Now you can just pull it free.

Now you can remove your lower guide. The cam shaft may turn a little bit. It's not a big deal. You have all the alignment marks that you can line back up. It's easier if you just keep the holding tool on the other side. You can remove the sprocket and chain, as well as remove that upper guide. Then you can repeat the process on the other side. You can see we removed the upper guide. Then remove the chain and sprocket, and also removed the crankshaft sprocket as well as the lower guide.

Carefully remove your front cover gaskets. They are held on buy a little bit of RTV in a couple of spots. Note those spots so you can do it the same putting it back together. I've got my shop-vac here. You can see we took things apart. Just little debris and stuff all around here. We're going to vacuum that out first with the shop-vac. We're going to pay close attention to this area as well as the cam cover area, and the cam area.

One step before you put everything together. You want to compare and make sure that what you're going to be putting on is the exact same as what you're taking off. We can see on this left tensioner, our gasket is blown right out. That's probably what was making a lot of the rattling noise. On this tensioner I can just squeeze with my fingers very easily. You shouldn't really be able to do that. That was probably our biggest problem. Very important step, use some cleaner, you can even use gasoline, and you want to make sure that you clean off any of the residue on that mounting surface. Get it good and clean before you put the tensioners back on.

I've cleaned off my surfaces here. I've also wiped down all the other gasket surfaces. I've just re-installed, and they're only hand tight right now, the two crank pulleys. You can see this one, the timing mark, is up here. This one did move a little bit, the timing mark is there. Now I've got my new crankshaft pulley. There's a timing mark in it right there. You can see I've lined up this black link on that timing mark. Now I can put the sprocket down on, and right on like that.

Bring the timing chain up. Let it go on the bottom first. Bring it up and around. Now you can see my black link is on my timing mark here as well. I'm going to take my other timing chain. I'm going to do it by feel. I'm going to feel for my timing mark. Okay, it's right there. Put the chain on. You can check either before or after, but we make sure that black link is lined up with the timing mark. This one we know we did spin it just a little bit, so we're going to bring it back up to where it should be.

Let's see how we do this. All we're doing here is just using that socket and ratchet to turn the cam shaft a little bit so we can line up the timing mark with the black link in the chain. You can see the only difference is this one is shallower. This is for the right hand, or passenger side of the engine. I just put a little bit of oil on it, and I'm going to lift up my chain and make sure it doesn't shift at all. Then put my guide in.

Now just replace the tensioner, and start tightening those bolts in by hand. Now torque those to 19 foot-pounds. You want to do this evenly. My right hand rail. Again, I put a little a little bit of oil on it just to make it slick. Then you put it down in. The shorter bolt goes down lower. Now just replace those bolts. Torque these to 120 inch-pounds to 10 foot-pounds. Again, coat that with a little bit of oil.

One tip for putting this together. Keep in mind I still have my lock on this cam, so it's not going to go anywhere. For instance, if I'm putting on this guide here, if you move the crank just a little bit I have my crank bolt in, you can see I tightened it up there it's a good idea to move it the other way. You have a little slack that will help you get the guide in a little easier. Again, with the tools still holding on the cams, tighten the cam sprocket bolts to 88 foot-pounds.

Let's take a little oil, stick it on my finger. Just any exposed area of the outside of the chain, up here, down at the bottom, just stick a little oil on there. Just so when the engine first starts up, there's a barrier between the chain and the guides.

Okay, everything is together and torqued. Now we can pull the clips from the tensioners. Remove your harmonic balancer bolt. Slide this gear back into place. You can now remove the cam holding tool. We'll fast-forward as Mike does this. We've put our gaskets back in the front cover. We just put a little dab of gasket maker right in these spots. Those correspond. There's actually just the little gap between the head and the engine block there. Then we're also going to take a little bit of gasket material, and put it right down at the corner where the oil pan meets the block here as well on the other side. Make sure you have everything out of the way down here, all the harnesses and stuff. I'll lift that up at the bottom a little bit.

Now just push it into place the rest of the way. Make sure there's nothing trapped behind it, and that everything is lined up properly. Then just push it straight back into place. Make sure it's sealed up on the bottom too. Just tap it with a hammer. Make sure it's all the way in place. I'm going to tighten these all up. Just seated a little bit. I'm going to go basically opposite. If I do this one here, I'm going to go down here. Here to here; here to here. Just alternating where I'm tightening up. Again, tighten them down so they're seated, and we'll torque them up in the next step.

Now that I've got them all preliminary tightened, I'm going to start down here, 20 foot-pounds. Go to this opposite one. Go over to the other side. Just keep working my way around. Then replace those bolts that go up through the oil pan and into your timing chain cover. We'll fast-forward as Mike replaces those and then tightens them up. It's pretty close quarters to torque these. I've just got a small ratchet and 20 to 25 foot-pounds is basically pretty nice and tight with a small ratchet.

The valve cover, put the gasket down in, press it into the channel. Then these go up through the hole and pop in. Just do that all the way around. I've got a little bit of oil in the cap. Before I put my valve cover on, I'm going to drop a little bit of oil on each one of the cam orbs just so they have some fresh oil for when we first start up. It just needs to be a couple of drops. Put a dab of gasket right here where the timing cover meets the head.

There's a little spot, just put a little bit right there. The same thing down below. I unhooked all of my injectors and coils to make it a little easier to seat this back in. I want to be careful not to knock the gasket off. You want to torque them up. I started in the middle. We're torquing them to 7 1/2 foot-pounds. To get the power steering pump back on, you've got this bolt here that doesn't come out because of the line. You want to feed it into its hole. Then pull this bracket up and on.

Now, from down here, I'm going to take this back bolt and feed it into its hole. Push it up in, and start it in. Get it in probably three or four turns, and make sure it's well seated. Before you get too far, make sure that you clip this harness connection on because you need some space back in here. We neglected to get a shot of it here. After this, you would go back down to where that bolt is right in behind the pulley, push it up into place, and tighten it. A couple of tips. When your front cover is out, make sure that the hole is nice and clear, and that the bolt will go on there nice and easy.

If you use one of the bolts that actually holds the serpentine belt tensioner, that's the same type of bolt as the bolt that's in the power steering pump. You can thread that in and out of that hole in the bottom of the timing chain cover a few times to make sure it goes easy. That way you can thread that bolt up in there with your fingers as far as possible. Then just reach through the pulley. Angle the wrench and get that bolt tightened up.

We've tightened up the stud bolts as well as put the bracket back on and the ground cable here, and tightened up these nuts. Obviously we tightened up the nut that you go to through here. Just remember that when you grab onto it, you have to really pull back this way. Get on it, and then keep working back and forth. Then we've just put all the simple stuff on the front of the engine, grove pulley, smooth pulley. Put the nut on there. Let's connect this sensor down here which is the crank position sensor. The tensioner, another idler pulley, and we put this bracket back on as well as attached this nut with the bracket. Actually I'm down here too. We put the nuts here for the brackets for these two sets of lines on each side of the lower engine. We torques all these nuts for the pulleys to 25 foot-pounds.

We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.