1998 Mercury 200 EFI Mechanical Damage Rebuild

[Lipripper]

I know you will be glad when it's all back together and you can test it out.

[jprism]

You are undoubtedly a great mechanic...it's my belief that this motor is going to purr for a long time to come. I have a dear friend here in Nashville "Steve Cole" that works on a 175 muscle car collection in Franklin TN and he also is meticulous with his work. It is a real joy watching your progress and hope to meet you on the lake one day.

[Bigwrench]

You are undoubtedly a great mechanic...it's my belief that this motor is going to purr for a long time to come. I have a dear friend here in Nashville "Steve Cole" that works on a 175 muscle car collection in Franklin TN and he also is meticulous with his work. It is a real joy watching your progress and hope to meet you on the lake one day.

I'm humbled by your words and truly appreciate them. That would be awesome to meet out on the water someday !
  We are getting real close to a running motor and it's getting heavier every day lol. Hopefully I can get through the electronics installation and check my injectors enough to feel comfortable taking it out soon.
Thank you !!

[Oldfart9999]

A lot of fastidious work there Rick, but it pays to be anal, that's some nice work there!
Rodney

[Bigwrench]

A lot of fastidious work there Rick, but it pays to be anal, that's some nice work there!
Rodney

Thanks Brother ! We have been busy as heck today so probably won't get to start back on it till late tonight or tomorrow evening. I think I may go ahead and install the powerhead on the boat first since I can manhandle it as it is now and get it set on there pretty easily by myself and then continue the build at eye level. 

[Bigwrench]

Ok let's rock & roll some !
Little Man came home from the lake and was all fired up to work on the motor . So we backed the Ranger up to the garage and he disappeared LOL !
Thankfully my neighbors came over to visit and I was able to get some serious progress made !

  First thing I did was I remembered I hadn't lubed up that press on lower bearing

Removed the lower end cap , packed it full of PTFE and stuck 2 little dabs of gray silicone on the mating surfaces

Reinstalled the end cap and then installed the lower powerhead gasket using the same 3M adhesive

I lightly glued it to the block

My neighbor graciously offered to help me install the powerhead so we both did it by hand and it was easy Peazy !
Stood it up

Got good handholds

Lifted it up enough to clear the studs

And slowly lowered it down


  Keep in mind the lower unit is not on the boat so we didn't have to deal with the drive shaft or splines.
Installed the nuts and flat washers and tightened it down.



Quick lubed all cylinders again with 2 stroke oil and wrapped the block with a plastic bag and taped it up


Installed the boat cover and time to work on some other stuff

[Bigwrench]

Reed Block/Fuel Injector Removal:
Remove the 12 Allen head bolts

and reeds may drop down to the table but most likely will be stuck to the gasket on the other side

Separate them from the gasket and I marked their location as well.

I also want to somewhat dissemble the Fuel injection rail assembly . Removed the cover and set aside , remove the rubber seal


Here's the injector block, rail assembly  and injectors they are going to work with me tomorrow for some preliminary testing

I labeled the injectors by location on the engine using the wiring diagram


At this point I do not want to disassemble the injector rail and the reason for that is I can do several tests on them and the entire wiring harness assembly/rail assembly while they are still installed.
I also want to see how they perform now and see where we are at before making a decision on how far to tear into them.
We will check for leaky/Sticking injectors, we will be measuring static and dynamic flow, we will also be looking at the spray pattern of each and checking the coil windings for short or open and hopefully we will also check the coil windings under full load  .
Depending on what we find we may go further , at the very least we will probably clean the inlet screens by backflowing them and dynamically clean the injectors as well. We will test at 1/2-second increments in three different ranges.  Which start 1 pulse of 500 milliseconds, 50 pulses of 10 milliseconds, and 100 pulses of 5 milliseconds. At $600 each I want to make sure they each are in great condition , mechanically and Electrically but also under the time crunch I am dealing with if they pass some basic tests you can do at home with some basic tools I'm gonna run with it. The injectors are very easy to get off and a good old run on the lake (Road Test) should be able to tell us if we still have an issue
Obviously if I find anything that concerns me I will disassemble the injectors , ultrasonically clean them and order the parts needed at that time

[Oldfart9999]

My hats off to you! You lost me after pulling the reed blocks, I'm stuck in carbetator mode. Sleds had vacuum operated fuel pumps and high tech was adjusting pop off pressure and possible jet changes and reeds were spring steel which could be adjusted with duckbill pliers.
My last Camero had a Qj that I played with, you aint getting me into puters, injectors and all that new fangled stuff.
Rodney

[jprism]

Questions:

Why did you choose to replace all pistons?

I believe I remember that you also replaced 1 head...why?

Thanks, Jim

[Bigwrench]

Questions:

Why did you choose to replace all pistons?

I believe I remember that you also replaced 1 head...why?

Thanks, Jim

Jim ,

   
Remember we had #6 piston which was basically destroyed , which in turn also destroyed the Port side cylinder head surface. On page 3 of this thread there are photos of the damage. Once I was able to determine the amount of damage to the Cylinder wall on #6 (By Honing and measuring) it was going to have to be sent to a machine shop for Boring oversize (in our case we went with.020" over) .To do that the block had to be completely disassembled and sent to them. The one oversize piston was going to be around $250, I would probably have changed #4 anyways because of the water wash, even though it was within specifications. That would have been another $140 or so. The Cylinder head that was damaged was found new for $113 and change.  The basic rebuild gasket kit would be $120 which doesn't include head gaskets which are another $40 each. 12 Rod Bolts $45.60 (Torque to yield) and 23 head bolts (TTY) $46 So basically I'm at that point about $773 plus machine shop charges $60=$833 . Not counting water pump and thermostats $60 and any miscellaneous stuff. Also If I reused the pistons it would have been crazy to not replace all the rings for the other 4 pistons at that time so another $225.95 for ring kit So we would be right around what $1400 ? And then you have to decide if you want to replace all the rod, piston pin and crank bearings as well..... I found the entire master kit for under a grand , they swapped in one oversize piston for a std one so I didn't have to buy an additional piston and then all I had to worry about was thermostats, cylinder head and water pump. Don't forget I broke the upper end cap $46 refurbished and the broken sealing rings as well $50
The biggest factor was the damage to the block and cylinder head from #6 . If I could have honed that cylinder clean and been able to reuse a Std piston in that hole I may have gotten by with just that part and some other stuff . Also all the metal and sludge from the damage was basically getting caught at the lower crank bearing area , I guess from gravity . Couldn't really leave all that in there either.  even after all the time in the parts washer , hot tank at the machine shop and the hand cleaning we did when I was cleaning the lower case half there was a bunch of sediment still in the passages there so Blew all that out and sprayed brake clean through all those bleed passages as well. Would have been no way to ensure all that crap was out of the block without a complete tear down. Hope that explains it better

[jprism]

Sure does thanks


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[Lipripper]

Looking good.o where did Little Man go.

[Bigwrench]

Looking good.o where did Little Man go.

Over next door playing with the little neighbor girl we have LOL He gravitates towards females ! Although she is probably 3 or 4 and cute a button and they are always outside playing together

[Lipripper]

  Over next door playing with the little neighbor girl we have LOL He gravitates towards females ! Although she is probably 3 or 4 and cute a button and they are always outside playing together

Was nice the neighbor helped out.

[Bigwrench]

Was nice the neighbor helped out.

Absolutely was ! He gets plenty of Neighborly freebies though LOL Getting ready to slap a ring and pinion in his Cobra Mustang probably for free LOL

[Lipripper]

Absolutely was ! He gets plenty of Neighborly freebies though LOL Getting ready to slap a ring and pinion in his Cobra Mustang probably for free LOL

Good neighbors are hard to find.

[Bigwrench]

Well I told y'all at the beginning I'd post as much detail as possible and show any setbacks so here goes a big one

  Had a Dr Appt for fitting of new Ears so got home a little early and decided to start knocking this thing out !
Installed the head gaskets

They are marked for proper installation so make sure to or attention to that

Dowels will hold them in place. Do not add any type of sealant or glue to these gaskets.
  Remember I told you we would be using that straight edge to check our cylinder heads and deck surface so here's how we do that
Lay the head upside down on a flat surface and lay your straight edge diagonally across the head

I really couldn't find a spec in the manual for this but normally a cylinder head warpage limit is .002-.004". I used a .0015" feeler gage.  If it's good with that one your not going to have an issue.
Lift the straight edge and slide the feeler under it and lower the straight edge back down


Pull on the feeler and make sure you have drag. Check it at all points that contact the straight edge. Another way to check is turn the lights out and shine a flashlight on the back side against the surface where the straight edge and head meet. If you see light on a sealing surface area you have warpage

  Ours was perfect so we installed the heads with thermostat holes at the top. Lightly oil the threads of the new head bolts , insert them in the proper location. On this engine we have 23 head bolts and 1 unique head bolt Stud. It has to go back on the top right corner location of the Port head.

Torque specifications and sequence for the head bolts

Follow the proper sequence , a little tip is its always start at center bolts and work in a circle pattern to the outer bolts
Torque to 30 lb ft in sequence and the an additional 90 degrees. Once both heads are torqued install a new gasket on the exhaust divider plate and install it. Torque bolts (20) to 17.5 lb ft. I torqued to 18 lol


My purpose was to get as much done last night  , get the engine sealed up from the elements and then go through the injector testing process today .
I installed the trigger plate assembly making sure the wires and the advance lever were properly routed through the top cap , installed the stator . Loctite on the 4 stator bolts

Again wire harness routing is critical here so follow the instructions in the manual.
Installed the flywheel , there is a portion of the crank that is missing teeth which will correspond with the flywheel teeth

and the flywheel washer and lock nut.
See how pretty that crank looks sticking up there ?
    Hold on to your hats cause it's about to get ugly

The manual states to hold the flywheel and torque the flywheel holding nut to 120 lb ft so I set my torque wrench to 120 lb ft. Slowly tightening the nut and once it seats I start pulling on the torque wrench handle waiting for it to click and the crank just snaps right off, with very little force !!! I mean I have tightened bleeder screws on a brake caliper tighter than that LOL . Just unbelievable !





  As you can imagine I coulda cried ! It appears to me that the metal at the surfaces that broke has been weak for a long time.  I can't say for sure but it appears the silver metal surfaces were all that was holding it together.
I'm researching more on this now  to see if this is common.
  A crank runs $850(reman)-$1200 (new) ! 
Welcome to the wonderful world of wrenching. We aren't sunk in the water yet but we are damn sure taking on some water and sinking fast !!!
I'm gonna do some research, try to contact a Mercury Expert for advice,  then I'm gonna take a couple days off and drink some beer and forget about it for awhile. Step back and get my thoughts together.
    Although I may still run through that injector testing procedure and get it up here , since I have been setting it up for like 3-4 days so I could show everyone properly.
   Stay tuned , pray for my sanity and thanks for all the support and encouragement.  More to come.

[Pferox]

Awww man, that sux.  So sorry to hear.  It will come together, it wouldn't be a worthwhile project without a setback or three.  My story and I'm sticking to it.

[hughesjasonk]

I have a question when torqueing down the head. Do you go in 1/4 turns until you click out on the wrench like a car engine? Or ratchet down to 30ft lbs then the 90 degree?

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[jprism]

Man I am sick for you I will say on the bright side best to happen now than running down the lake with 25lbs in the live well.


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[Pferox]

So, how far back will you have to go to replace that crank?  Just wondering.

[Bigwrench]

I have a question when torqueing down the head. Do you go in 1/4 turns until you click out on the wrench like a car engine? Or ratchet down to 30ft lbs then the 90 degree?

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Good question , yes I shoulda mentioned that . Make sure you tighten down evenly (in sequence) in steps until your torque is achieved in our case it was 30 foot lbs. now the 90 degrees needs to be made in one fluid motion but also using the proper sequence.

[Bigwrench]

So, how far back will you have to go to replace that crank?  Just wondering.

The entire crankshaft will have to be replaced

  Maybe I could redneck it with JB weld lol.
  One of these days I'll tell y'all about a Subaru crank I "re-engineered" at the customers request , saved the customer thousands but was a big gamble.

[jprism]

Maybe a Go Fund Me page is in order and let us know. I would be in for sure.


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[Bigwrench]

Maybe a Go Fund Me page is in order and let us know. I would be in for sure.


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LOL !!! Gonna need something !
Would be nice to get about 6 balljoint jobs in a row on Full Size Chevys next few days That would about cover it