In October of 2003 my dad and I were on our way home to Marysville, Ca (N.of Sacramento), returning from a trip to visit my uncle in Pheonix, Az. We were just entering heavy L.A. traffic around 4:00 PM. Seeing as how traffic was extremely thick and had no chance of getting any better, we decided to pull off at the next exit. We thought about going to the movies, but seeing as how we had the back of my Probe loaded down with two suitcases, my electric guitar & amplifier, a couple of sets of tools and my pet parrot, we weren't too comfortable leaving it in the parking garage, especially since an alarm had just gone off on the next level and a black Mustang had just come speeding down from up there with a police cruiser chasing close behind.
So instead, we decided to grab something for dinner and find a supermarket so we could buy some asprin for my headache. After killing about two hours of driving around and listening to the radio we decided to get back on the freeway.
We entered the freeway at about 6:00 PM...bad idea as it turned out, and seemed to seal my poor Probe's fate. As we merged into traffic we were only going about 5-10MPH, it was a constant stop and go struggle.
Then I had to merge over three left lanes in order to make my turn off. It was pooring down rain and there were puddles everywhere on the side of the road. Some could've been big enough to be classified as lakes. By 8:00 PM we had traveled two miles from where we entered the freeway and we had listened to my dad's Presley CD about 20 times. The traffic was outrageous. While we were stuck in traffic at one point, off to the right we saw a big-rig slowing down to allow about 5 cars and another semi to merge in front of him. Much to our suprise, another big-rig tried forcing his way into traffic after the first big-rig had already let the other cars and the one big-rig merge. The two came extremely close to hitting each other until the driver of the first truck finally just stopped and let the other truck in. Unfortunately, this was not the last time we would see this crazy driver of the second truck.
A little later when traffic started to move a little bit, I had to merge back into the far right lane to get on another freeway. Once I made my exit traffic was flowing much smoother until we started to exit the long ramp to get on the free way.
Once I got off of the ramp I tried turning on my signal to enter the lane. At the time I was traveling on the wide shoulder of the road, but I had to hurry since it was narrowing all the time. There toward the front where traffic was starting to move was the big white semi-truck we'd seen earlier forcing his way into the lane. There was a Honda Civic in front of me, the Honda nailed it and as it went up over the hill I couldn't see it anymore. I suspected it made it in front of the truck. I, too, floored it and let the throttle wide-open. But as I started driving into more and more water on the narrowing shoulder, I didn't have room to get around the truck. It seemed only logical that the driver of the truck would slow down and let me in. But instead he kept on trucking, and I was in 3 feet of water.
I was almost ahead of him, I could've made it, but the driver of the truck started to veer over to the right and came extremely close to my Probe. For fear that he was going to take off my mirror I swerved back into the water and let off the gas. Just as soon as I let off the gas, BOOM!!! My mighty little Probe stopped running and started steaming from under the hood.
To make a long story short, according to a good mechanic-friend, when I let off of the accelerator, my engine created a suction and sucked all of the water up through the tail-pipe and warped the rod of my #1 cylinder and broke it off.

So I thought about some options. I thought about selling my '91 LX and my '86 Bronco II for the money to get a GT. That was the biggest consideration. I also thought about selling off my cars for the down payment on a new car, but at this point in my life I can't picture myself driving anything other than a Probe. So I thought about it for about a month, then came to my desicion. I decided to buy a newer vulcan out of a wrecked Taurus to drop into my Probe. So this page is dedicated to time and effort we put into dropping in my 2003 Vulcan with only 8,500 miles!
I found the engine on eBay for $1.00 and No Reserve. The seller left his phone number in the item description, so we called and worked out a deal. The seller originally wanted $700 but I talked him down to $600 and arranged to pick it up on December 27th. I live 30 minutes north of Sacramento and the engine was in Portland, about 7.5 hours away. So it wasn't so bad, being about a day's drive up there. We started work on the motor on Janurary 10. Here's a picture of the engine after we got out of the back of my Bronco and bolted it to the engine stand:
First, plans had to be made. Originally, I had planned to drop the engine in as it was with the EEC-V/OBD-II software. I got the whole wiring harness along with the ECU, so I had anticipated running it that way. However, there were several problems. The first and foremost problem started with the whole exhaust setup. The front exhaust manifold stuck out way too far for the engine compartment and I would've had to figure out some way of mounting the radiator differently to make room for it. The second problem was the catylitic converter, it too stuck out too far as well. Then, on top of that, the Y-Pipe didn't line up. I couldn't use the exhaust manifolds off of my old motor because of the sensore that are installed before and after each cat. I was going to have to drill out a hole for each my old manifolds and, somehow, have a custom Y-Pipe welded to compensate for both cats. Then I was going to face the problems of running the wiring harness and hooking up the fuse box. But the insanity didn't stop there. On the Probes, the passenger-side motor mount bolts on top of the water pump. On the newer Taurus motor, there were no bolt-holes on the water pump, so we'd have to swap it. We also had to change the crank pulley and the flywheel. At this point, I gave up and said to heck with it. I decided to strip the motor down to a short-block and swap the parts.
Below, is a comparison of the two water pumps:
This is the water pump on the 2003 motor:
Here's a couple of shots of the water pump on the 1991 motor before and after we removed the engine mount:
Now that we'd finally decided to run the motor with OBD-I compatibilty, we were ready to start working. First, we used a Sharpie to mark the position in which to bolt the hood up before removing it. Then, we started disconnecting clamps and hoses and then later on, different parts of the wiring harness. We took pictures with a digital camera before and after each time we took something apart in order to avoid confusion later on when trying to hood everything back up. Later, the same day, it already proved it's self useful when we forgot about where something went that we had already taken apart. A quick review on the camera revealed what we had taken apart and helped us to figure out where it went and we were able to properly label the part and store it for later.
MAP Sensor....
Notes:
The Manifold Absolute Pressure (MAP) Sensor operates as a pressure sensing disc. It does not generate a voltage, instead its output is a frequency range. The sensor changes frequency according to intake manifold vacuum; as vacuum increases, sensor frequency increases. The info from the MAP sensor allow's the ECU to determine what the engine load is. It's signal affects air/fuel ratio, ignition timing, EGR flow and altitude compensation.
HOME <<<Prev. Page Next Page>>>
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1