Ok today I looked at my car cuz it was leaking coolant and noticed I may have either a cracked head or leaking gasket. It wasnt leaking bad but enough to leave a small puddle sometimes. Soo that means I gotta pull the heads off this bad boy and an excuse for me to justify with my significant other to do a 4.2 swap. I read the official 4.2 swap on 3.8mustang.com. but am a lil confused over the year 4.2's I can use. I have a 97 manual tranny, I want to use my old block again and xfer parts from a short block but when reading that thread I was dumbfounded to which year 4.2 I should start looking for since I may need to replace my heads?

 

I haven't seen the 4.2 write-up on 3.8mustang, but I did run across this a while ago and bookmarked it.
http://www.mustangevolution.com/forum/t9601/

 

I think you can use any 4.2 from a F 150 from 97-08. Im not too sure tho, havent actually looked into it.

 

What confused me alittle was about using the cranks for dif models as my mustang is externally balanced and the f150 is internally (but my question what i have a question is are all f150 engines for those years are the same) I think what I would have to do is get a 2000 mustang flywheel since its neutrally balanced then go from there. Right now I have some copper stop leak in it and it had stopped leaking for now but I wanna get the work done hopefully by december so imma take it easy on my car till then.

 

i have a similar issue with a '96 pony . has a 2000 rebuilder engine in it and acts like a headgasket leak . no leaking under car of collant but smokes and loses coolant and runs hot

i started breakin it down and when i pulled the intake off i found the gasket set had failed on the water journals on both sides of front of block.

my question is ..... Would the failed gasket set cause the same symptoms as a head gasket failure????

would save me a load of time and money if i didnt have to break anything else down from here>>

thx in advance for any answers!!