3F-E Conversion Thread

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The fan clutch will be engaged for a few seconds during start up, you can hear it roar pretty loud at first then it quiets down. This is a good test to see if the internals seam to be working. Then as temperature of the air goes up, it will engage more. Do you have the history of the radiator you are using? It may be degraded.
 
lelandEOD said:
I just installed a brand new fan clutch and my temp gauge is reading 240. Too **** hot!

I thought the fan clutch was supposed to lock/become harder to spin when the engine gets really hot? First of all, I can't hear any difference in fan noise from cold, to hot, to too hot. And second, I notice that the fan spins easier, by hand, immediately after I shut the engine down. Is this wrong or am I completely missing something on the operation of the fan clutch?
Click to expand...

I had a few similar issues with my 3FE. Proffitt's did end up putting a new fan clutch on, and also went with a different viscosity of fluid in the clutch. That only helped a bit (temps still got out of control when going slow/low rpms). The ended up fabricating a custom fan shroud that pretty much eliminates any possibility of air bypassing the radiator through the sides of the fan shroud. That pretty much solved the problem with coolant temps. And yes, I can tell when the fan kicks in. It has a 195 degree thermostat in it, when it reaches temperature, the fan kicks on, and is very, very obvious when its engaged. When I had overheating problems before, not so obvious. I think now the fan is less variable (meaning it's either not engaged, or it is fully engaged). I'm not sure if it's the same as what you are experiencing, you can see the running narrative of the problem and solution on my thread, starting at post 153. Even though the coolant temps are stable, she still puts out a LOT of heat.

****edit**** I took the 45 for a spin and checked how easy it was to spin the fan cold and hot.... I could feel the fluid in the clutch was stiffer when it was hot, but not by a lot. It definitely wasn't locked up or super hard to turn the fan by hand.
 
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INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT TONIGHT:

It's not overheating.




At least, I don't think it is. I decided to go pick up one of those digital IR thermometers to make sure my gauge wasn't lying to me before dropping $200+ on a new radiator or thermostat housing. It's a good thing I did because the engine seems to be running at a normal temp. Here are the readings I got tonight.

Engine at idle. Let it warm up. Autometer temp gauge indicated 240°.

After 10 minutes of running, the most I was getting was:

188° at the cylinder head
120° at the valve cover
191° at the thermostat housing
190° at the top of the radiator
115° at the bottom of the radiator
520° at the engine manifold


Do these temps indicate anything but a happy engine?
Now I've got to figure out why my new Autometer gauge is reading 50° too high.
 
Do you have the specs on the temperature sender (ohms vs temp)? I would look at the ohms reading and convert to temperature to compare to your IR thermometer.
 
Only a few. I went to Summit and bought the Autometer metric adapters to fit the senders (oil and water) that came with the gauges and that solved the problem with the incorrect readings.

I also got the engine timed correctly, following the FSM. I couldn't figure out why it had no power and acted sluggish until I redid the timing procedure. I had the distributor off by one tooth. Yikes. Now the motor purrs like a kitten and runs great. I'm very happy with the engine so far. Unfortunately, my drives are limited to circling the neighborhood at about 25mph. I have the truck registered and road legal but don't have good tires on it. The tires on the truck have a production date of 1991 and are flat spotted something terrible. The whole truck hops violently so I can only putter around right now.


I'm eyeing a set of 33x10.5x15 KM2's for the truck but unfortunately we had to put $6,500 worth of braces in my wife's mouth to correct uneven wear on her teeth last month. That basically killed my tire budget so it's going to be a while before I can shoe the old girl.

I only have a few bugs to work out with the drivetrain before I disassembly everything to do bodywork. I've got one brake dragging (GM caliper in the rear) and my high beams aren't working for some reason. But, the engine is basically done at this point.
 
lelandEOD said:
Does anyone know what these holes are for? Are they even factory?




The engine harness is buttoned back up. I had to reroute the fuel pressure VSV wires into the engine harness since I'm not going to mount it on the fender. I have yet to figure out a good place to mount it on the plentum though.



I put in the battery tray to see how much room I'll have for the charcoal canister, fuel filter and air cleaner.



I really wanted to use the stock air cleaner assembly on this, but I just don't see any way that is possible.

The FJ62 charcoal canister bracket will bolt up to the FJ40 frame with a little bit of tweaking:



And to answer a question asked earlier; the stock FJ62 throttle cable will fit very nicely:







I'm also using the stock FJ62 booster and just had to shorten up the booster line a bit to fit:



The power steering box is going to be a tight fit with the exhaust manifold:



The real close call is the drag link and the driver's side shock. This is pretty dang close in my book:

Click to expand...

What motor mounts are you using for the conversion?
Any motor mount modification?
Thanks,
 
I used the updated (rectangular) FJ40 mounts from SOR and the existing FJ62 engine mount brackets.

I had to slot both the mounting brackets and the frame mounted brackets a bit and used a 3/4" spacer on the driver's side to get the engine where I wanted it.
 
lelandEOD said:
I used the updated (rectangular) FJ40 mounts from SOR and the existing FJ62 engine mount brackets.

I had to slot both the mounting brackets and the frame mounted brackets a bit and used a 3/4" spacer on the driver's side to get the engine where I wanted it.
Click to expand...

I am in the process to swap my '62 3F EFI engine
into my '74 three years ago and didn't have time
to complete the project, every things been stripped
down and just seating in the garage.
Do you have any pictures of the mounting brackets
that you can share with me how you mount them or
modified them, will be greatly appreciated.
Email: igniter3@hotmail.com
Thanks,
 
I used the stock 62 brackets and mounts. No weird spacer tilting the engine. Somewhere in my thread might be a picture. Slotted the frame mount half inch one direction. Used stock fj62 front engine mounts as they were offset.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using IH8MUD
 
I don't think I took any photos of the enlarged mount holes but I'll dig around to see if I've missed any.


The idle problem seemed to have corrected itself... When I start the engine cold, it idles a bit high (maybe 800rpm). And as it warms up it will drop to 650. I don't have an explanation as I didn't change anything. I'm happy so I'm not going to question the 3FE gods.
 
Right, engine idle is higher when cold, then decreases gradually to 650 as engine coolant temperature warms up to 158 F.
 
I'm running out of things to update on the 3Fe swap. I did finally find a way to mount the forward most O2 sensor to my liking. I found an unused cable clip that I had yellow zinc plated that wasn't being used anywhere. So, I bolted it to the intake manifold and routed the sensor wire through it to keep it from melting on the exhaust:

44262E8B-53A6-48D1-A0DA-ABAD579B0870-1334-00000065E28C0A94_zpsd4f7926d.jpg


Also, I found that the unused hole on the manifold between these two runners worked perfectly for clipping the sensor connector to:

150563CB-20F8-4693-8F97-FF79198D7796-1334-00000065E7B5E0E6_zps9ceaca8f.jpg
 
I wish I could say things went as planned. After I got the engine running last fall, I pulled the tub off the frame to focus on body work. In doing so, I pushed the frame (with engine installed) outside and forgot to drain all the water out of the engine and a cold snap cracked the block and/or head.

I didn't find out until March when I reinstalled the tub and tried to get the engine running. Cylinder five had 0 compression so I had to completely source another 3FE. I found a real nice engine at the Stockton swap meet that came out of a '92 80 series. It has 152+ pounds on all cylinders and doesn't even have any apparent oil leaks. I just cleaned it all up and swapped all the ancillary parts from the old engine over to this one. I just got it bolted up and haven't actually started it up yet, so I'll keep you posted.


FYI,

Drain the water from the block before winter.
 
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