Thinking about getting this 97

I was looking at my dirtbike main bearings; rollers pressed into a magnesium case that had too thin of a cross-section, and is broken around the entire bearing cup. Crap. Welding magnesium sux.
 
Bearings usually stay where they're supposed to. It's when they go bad that they come out. rollers don't, plain bearings stick...
Matt, was it your 2v that lost oil pressure?
 
XR7-4.6 said:
Rear wheel bearings are press fit, as are cam bearings in pushrod engines, the control arm bushings, ball joints, numerous transmission bearings etc
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Don't forget about the venerable Ford 2.3 🤪 press fit cam bearings. I'm sure there are other non pushrod engines with press fit cam bearings.
 
97 30th said:
Don't forget about the venerable Ford 2.3 🤪 press fit cam bearings. I'm sure there are other non pushrod engines with press fit cam bearings.
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Hey, only I’m allowed to be pedantic round these parts! 🤣

Grog6 said:
Bearings usually stay where they're supposed to. It's when they go bad that they come out. rollers don't, plain bearings stick...
Matt, was it your 2v that lost oil pressure?
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Both my 2V and my 4V did, the used HO pickup tube I had turned out to be bent upward. I glittered the oil but I managed to catch it before it damaged anything beyond the rod bearings. Mains, cam caps, even the rod journals on the crank were unscathed. I caught it before the bearings could spin

The 2V I full on spun them, the crank and rods scored scratched and blued and just trashed. The 4 of the 8 bearings were basically 90° from where they were.
 
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I fixed the front right turn signal and at the same time I broke the little tabs that secure the ballast to the rest of the harness 😓. Am I to expect any trouble with these tabs broken?

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And water is the reason why I separated this part and not just do a twist and pull. I knew that the lens had water penetration from when I bought the car back in July, but it apparently has been an ongoing thing for a while because of the corrosion and the green spots throughout the interior of the lens.

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So with this level of corrosion, I decided to pull out one of the spares I purchased some time ago. It wasn't a perfect unit, but it's dry and the ballast is perfectly fine. The only flaw it has is a small crack in the lens itself. The one I removed was crack free, but had all that corrosion and green pits throughout the silver as seen above.

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This corner light was intended for Dirty Bird, but seeing that Dirty Bird isn't being driven right now, Gold Bird got it.
 
Ballast? It’s an incandescent bulb, there’s no ballast, it’s just a connector to a socket. I’m far more used to 89-95 ones where the wires just go straight to a barely sealed socket. In your case the gasket looks intact so I wouldn’t worry about the lock tabs being broken
 
XR7-4.6 said:
Ballast? It’s an incandescent bulb, there’s no ballast, it’s just a connector to a socket. I’m far more used to 89-95 ones where the wires just go straight to a barely sealed socket. In your case the gasket looks intact so I wouldn’t worry about the lock tabs being broken
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You're so pedantic with terminology 😂
 
Zip ties, electrical tape, lacing cord. all options to keep that thing plugged in.
 
XR7-4.6 said:
Yeah because without people like me being pedantic there’d be swaths of the masses calling lead/acid batteries nuclear reactors! 😝
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Meh. I'll just also interchange shocks and struts when talking about our MN12 front ends 😂.

Also, meet my boy and he'll give all the "what if" scenarios possible that won't ever happen, up to and including, nuclear explosions from the tiniest of things followed by the, "I know how jet engines work and why they should be in everything that flies" 🤣
 
I guess the Dorman pan isn't the only pan in town anymore with a drain plug. Is there any pan in particular you guys would get over the stock one?

Then all I have to worry about is the gasket and make sure it's marked as "reusable", right? Or should I just grab the Motorcraft gasket regardless?

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SKP and Dorman use the same part number, lol. And to be honest as messy as draining a pan is, it's coming off anytime I do a trans service. You should always do a new filter, requiring the pan to come off, so I wouldn't spend any money on a drain plug.
 
Zep5.0 said:
SKP and Dorman use the same part number, lol. And to be honest as messy as draining a pan is, it's coming off anytime I do a trans service. You should always do a new filter, requiring the pan to come off, so I wouldn't spend any money on a drain plug.
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It’s not the skipping of replacing the filter the plug is useful for it’s having all the Mercon go out a convenient drain hole you can put a drain pan under rather than getting a Mercon bath that hits everything except the drain pan.
 
XR7-4.6 said:
It’s not the skipping of replacing the filter the plug is useful for it’s having all the Mercon go out a convenient drain hole you can put a drain pan under rather than getting a Mercon bath that hits everything except the drain pan.
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This is the answer, @Zep5.0
 
$5 hand pump gets 4 quarts through the dipstick tube. The drain plug pan is A. a waste of money, and B. adds a new failure point.

And I don't really agree about changing the filter every time. My last change, which was supposedly the first ever change on my car (toy present) at 57,000 miles, I cut open the filter. There was literally nothing in it, nothing visible anyway.

I'm at 87,000 miles now, planning the next change in the spring. I'll siphon the pan dry and drain the torque converter. No plan to drop the pan unless I see anything floating in the pan fluid.
 
I'm not one to shy away from assisting money when it makes life easier, but a bit of a mess every couple years just isn't a big deal. I would however buy this pan rather than pump out 4 qts, because I'm lazy😆
 
1997ThunderbirdLXV6 said:
$5 hand pump gets 4 quarts through the dipstick tube. The drain plug pan is A. a waste of money, and B. adds a new failure point.

And I don't really agree about changing the filter every time. My last change, which was supposedly the first ever change on my car (toy present) at 57,000 miles, I cut open the filter. There was literally nothing in it, nothing visible anyway.

I'm at 87,000 miles now, planning the next change in the spring. I'll siphon the pan dry and drain the torque converter. No plan to drop the pan unless I see anything floating in the pan fluid.
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My Honda has a drain plug for the ATF and it's great. I am more than happy to bring over such a useful feature to my new - to me - car.

The hand pump, I've used them before on other things, and my experiences with them are less than stellar. The hose on them doesn't fully unwind and doesn't go down the tube it's supposed to go into and therefore, can't siphon fluid. The other problem I've had with them is that I can't get a good seal on the pump part and it won't siphon fluid up if I do manage the hose to go down the tube.

Zep5.0 said:
I'm not one to shy away from assisting money when it makes life easier, but a bit of a mess every couple years just isn't a big deal. I would however buy this pan rather than pump out 4 qts, because I'm lazy😆
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I just got a new driveway. My wife would be hella pissed if I made the driveway worse than it already is. This task is going to be tricky enough as it is.
 
Not changing a filter is a bad idea. Would you change your oil, and not the filter?
The drain plug is to avoid the "mercon shower" part. You still drop the pan, clean it out, and look at how much of your transmission is stuck to the magnet.
 
Grog6 said:
Not changing a filter is a bad idea. Would you change your oil, and not the filter?
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Think about this one more time. Is this really a reasonable comparison: ATF vs. engine oil?

I will agree with you to the extent that changing the filter can't do any harm... But the benefit is incremental at best. If anything, I'd much rather drop the pan to inspect how things look in there, and the filter change would become a "might as well".

If I remember correctly, even the factory maintenance manual doesn't recommend changing the filter unless there's contamination present in the fluid.
 
There are nearly as many wearable parts in a transmission, so I do think it's a decent comparison. I'd bet there was more in the filter than meets the eye.
 
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