Hello Warriors. This is a novel, if you enjoy reading.

I'm just posting to share my ordeal I call it an Odyssey with my O2 4x4 Ranger. I bought the truck just after COVID hit and I overpaid for it had a lot of rust and bad brakes, shocks were done etc. So I had another vehicle at the time for commuting this was just my go to home Depot and pick up some plywood vehicle.

About a year after buying it I got the death rattle. Took it to a mechanic who said he couldn't repair it because he had to remove the motor, and apparently they didn't have that capability. So being the ***** out maniac that I am, I bought a crane and a motor stand and I pulled the motor. Now here's where it gets good. * All the time and components were good except the front tensioner and guide The tensioner had broken thus the death rattle. But my good friend and mentor told me that while I had the motor out I should replace all of the timing components. The front and rear cassettes looked fine, like they had been recently replaced. Two years of parts Canon and bruises and God knows what else could have ended right there, but I took his advice and long story short broke three valves on the driver's side.

I didn't have the money or the expertise to do a rebuild so after a neighbor dropped the dime on me for having a disabled vehicle in the driveway the truck went into the garage and stayed there for a year. (Stabil in gas tank, but didn't circulate it)

Sadly my aunt passed away last year but left me a little bit of money so that I could buy a motor. I bought a motor from eBay, a little higher mileage than the truck I had, but at this point I was just wanting to get it running to sell it.
I cleaned it up and inspected it everything looked good from my limited point of view, so I put the motor in. Well, it happens quite often but I had the torque converter slightly out and so out she came, I put the torque converter in properly and then got the motor in. It ran like crap. So the biggest lesson learned is to always do a compression test even if you have to haul a battery next to the motor on the stand or take it off the stand so you can spin the starter. By the time I changed out a bunch of parts and new wires and spark plugs and coil pack I discovered I had poor compression. After taking the motor completely out again, I discovered that the cassettes were completely destroyed, and I found a big piece of metal in the crankcase, which was the tension part for the front timing tensioner. There was also a plastic salad all over the pickup tube. Now at this point I didn't know I had three bent valves, I just knew I had a problem. So, like a lot of amateurs do, I fixed the timing (yes, used the special tools), put the motor back in, and it's still ran like crap. I finally did a compression test and had 40, 0, and 140 on bank two. That's when I ventured into the realm of lapping valves.

I pulled the bank 2 driver side cylinder head off, and did a fluid test and sure enough it was leaking like a sieve. So I pulled the valves and three of them had trouble coming out I realized they were bent. So at this point I have four cylinder heads, and I was able to scavenge some decent valves from one of the other heads. I did have to replace one valve guide. The top of it had cracked from the bent Valve.

Lapped the valves did the fluid test again It was holding liquid fine, so I felt pretty confident about slapping it back together. New bolts new head gasket and no crank no start.

After pulling my hair out for almost 2 weeks, and looking at a wiring diagram I wiggled the relay to the ECU and I got crank. Then in wonderful Amazon fashion, I was suspicious about the new connector I had put on the crank position sensor, so I flipped the wires and she started up. The connector had a blue and white wire, you would think you would hook the blue wire to the blue wire and the white wire to the white wire, but nooooo.

She started up I tried to drive her, but I threw up p0171 code. Turns out a vacuum tube had melted I'm assuming against the exhaust manifold, so I fixed that and cleared the code. The code hasn't come back, but the idle is still rough. I did a smoke test and found some smoke coming out of the left side of my throttle body. So currently I have that disassembled and I'm going to replace the little o-rings, gasket, and hopefully that will seal it up. I'm also throwing a PCV valve on there just because I don't trust the one that I have. It passes the rattle test and the blow test, but it's also got 147,000 mi on it.

Fuel pressure holds at 60 psi

New parts installed that might effect idle:
Delphi MAF sensor
Motorcraft EGR valve
Aftermarket TPS
Aftermarket coil pack
Motorcraft plugs and wires
Motorcraft fuel filter
​​​​Will be installing:
IAC
PCV
*I could have had this thing sold two years ago if I just replaced the front guide and tensioner and cleaned out the upper pan. 🤦🏻‍♂️

 

What a project!
Somebody will be along to scold you for the 'non-Motorcraft" MAF sensor. (ha-ha)
The ebay engine cost what? if you don't mind me asking.
Did you ebay local?

Which vacuum line got melted (last paragraph)?
Check the PCV to intake tubing. The plastic gets brittle / rubber elbows fail.

 

The vacuum hose was going from the main vac to the reservoir. Yeah, I researched Delphi, and they're the closest to motorcraft I could find. Still over $100 tho! I put the remaining parts on today, and the idle is much smoother. Test drive tomorrow and see what happens...
Oh, the motor was from Texas I believe. Listed for $870, got it for about $600. Yeah, that should have been the first red flag...