2002 Mercury Mountaineer V8 4.6L Timing Chain Set Preferred Components Inc TS10387C

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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.

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.

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace the timing chain on this 2003 Mercury Mountaineer with the 4.6-liter V8 engine. To pull off this repair you're going to need quite a breadth of tools. You'll need a very good socket and ratchet set along with screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers and things like that. You also need some specialty tools, we've listed them here, and you'll see how we use stuff within the video to take things apart.

The first part is disconnect both your battery cables, and then you're going to want to basically take the front of the engine apart to get to the front of the engine, and that's going to vary somewhat by different vehicles, so we'll show you on this Mountaineer what we did. Lift up on the panel and pull it free. Then remove these two 11mm nuts. Once you remove those, lift the engine cover up and off and then pull the hose free. Lift up on the tab on this harness and disconnect it, pull this hose free, and then loosen up this hose clamp with a flat blade screwdriver. Then just pull that hose free. Now you just want to lift your air intake box out so pull those two hoses out, pull the air intake box from the side of the vehicle. Then lift that and the hose assembly up and out.

Slide a drip pan underneath and then, using a pair of pliers, push the teeth together on this clamp. Slide it back and pull the hose free. You want to lift it up so no more coolant will splash out. Just tuck this end over here. Now remove this 13mm nut, and we'll fast-forward as Mike does that. Remove the bolts that hold either side of the upper radiator shroud, and also undo the clip for the refrigeration line. Using a 10mm wrench, just remove these fan bolts.

We're going to remove the fan belt this is the cheap and easy way. Just take the screwdriver and pry it out and off of this idler pulley down here. Once you get it off of there, actually pulling up on the belt and off the alternator. Then just remove the belt the rest of the way. I'm going to get my 10mm wrench on here, and then I'm going to put my large adjustable there to hold it. I'm going to use another wrench to hook on my 10mm to give me some extra leverage and loosen that bolt.

For now, I'm going to loosen all four bolts, but I'm only going to remove two so that I can get the tools in there. I need to remove the fan clutch. I'm going to take this tool, and the peg goes into the hole there. Then I'm going to put it right against that stud to hold it. I think I've got it here. I use that fan pulley wrench, put it into one of the holes that I've taken one of the bolts out of, and then was able to hold onto it and loosen the fan clutch with the larger adjustable wrench. We're going to use a piece of wood to make a tool to hold the crank. If you look down here, you'll see I've got three, these bolts are M8 by 125, they are holes in the harmonic balancer pulley, so I've put those bolts there. I'm just going to put the piece of wood against them and hold it on there firm and just make a mark at the top of each one.

Here's my three marks. All right, if I draw a line, let's see, straight, between these two, it doesn't have to be perfect. Straight between these two and straight between these two that's the center. I've got my three dots, and then I made a center hole, so I'm going to use a 3/8 drill, that will be big enough for my bolts and to have a little bit of movement for adjustment. Now I'm going to drill a 1/8 inch pilot hole in the middle. Now we're going to use a 1 inch wood bit because that will allow my socket to get through there pretty easily. I've got my wood, this is the large hole that the socket and ratchet can go through to the crank bolt.

I'm going to bolt it on with my three other bolts. As you can see, I've got my board on there, and that can actually hold the crank shaft. 18mm socket and ratchet right through that large hole. The board allows you to hold the engine in place while you remove the bolt for the harmonic balancer.

This is a harmonic balancer puller tool, you can see we've threaded this on. We're going to put this end on it so that it doesn't go down the crank. Then we're going to use our three long bolts and bolt the three bolts to the harmonic balancer. You can see we've got our puller mounted with the three bolts into the balancer, and we just tighten up the puller and pull it free. Now just pull your harmonic balancer up and out. Pull off your water pump pulley. Now we're just going to remove, basically, anything that's bolted to the front cover: pulleys, tensioner, there's some brackets, and then over here more pulleys and brackets, and even down lower there's some smaller brackets holding hoses at the bottom. When the last of those bolts that holds in the tensioner is removed, it just pulls free.

Once you remove the nut down here, you just want to pry that bracket off the stud. Just for safe keeping, I just thread all the bolts back into their holes. Next is removing the power steering pump, and it's probably the hardest part of the whole thing. There are two studs right down here. First you remove the nuts and then you remove the bracket that's on there as well as the negative battery cable. Then those nuts are actually on stud bolts, so you have to remove those bolts. They're all 13mm. You'll need a 13mm long socket.

For these two studs, I was able to get one out with my big impact socket here. The one that's closer to the front of the vehicle, you need a narrower deep socket, 13mm, to be able to get up in there and clear everything and then remove it. Now down here, on your lower fan shroud, there's two more 8mm bolts; just go ahead and remove those. Then pull the fan shroud up and out. You have to angle up one end and then just feed it up and out.

There's another 10mm bolt right under here, and there's actually a line that goes right underneath it. You can get a 10mm wrench through your pulley onto the bolt, and you can just do it a 1/16 of a turn at a time. When I said that removing the power steering pump was the hardest part, this bolt is actually hardest part of this whole procedure both taking it out and putting it back on. You've got to get your 10mm wrench in there, you can turn it about an 1/8 to a 1/4 of a turn at a time, and flip the wrench over. You have to angle it and move the power steering pulley a little bit as you're turning. Eventually it'll come down and out.

Now we're going to get into removing the valve covers. You want to pull the harnesses up and off, and you can actually disconnect the harnesses from all the coils and fuel injectors, and that will give you a little extra room. Pull all the hoses from the valve covers. Then remove the 8mm, and I think there's even maybe a 13mm bolt on one side. Just remove all those, and then you can pull the valve covers up and out. I'm just going to move this out of the way, and then a 13mm bolt right here that holds it.

Now just tap this lightly with a hammer to separate it. Then you just want to lift up on the valve cover and just move all the harnesses out of the way. We're just going to fast-forward as he keeps working it out. Once you get it to a certain point, you can just pull the valve cover free. You're going to want to do the same thing on this side but first, there's a bracket right here with an 8mm bolt. Just remove that bolt and pull the bracket free. Then repeat the procedure to remove that camshaft cover.

On the timing chain cover there are four 13mm bolts that go up through bottom of the oil pan. There are one, two, three, and four. They hold the oil pan into the timing chain cover, so we'll remove those first. Some of the studs that hold the timing cover on have wire harness clips on them so pry those off. Then you'll need a deep socket to remove the 18mm stud bolts that hold the cover on. Then it's held on also by eight 13mm bolts. There's actually one more bolt right here under the water pump, so just remove that. You want to just push the tab on this harness and disconnect it. Do the same thing with this harness up here. Carefully remove your camshaft or valve cover gaskets, you want to be sure not to tear them or rip them because you'll be reusing them. They have a little bit of gasket sealer to hold them in place, and plug the cracks between the timing cover and the engine.

Now, at the top, there are little ears that you can pry very lightly. It should come off. If it doesn't come off for any reason, just make sure that you have all the bolts out but it should come out. Then, carefully, you just want to lift this up and out. It is sealed up a little on the bottom, so you have to pull at the bottom a little bit, and then just carefully feed the front of your engine up and out. It does take some maneuvering. Now we have access to the timing chain.

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.