After bringing it home three months ago (almost to the day), the Expedition Allroad is moving under its own power, and it (mostly) does so quite well.
After setting the engine in last weekend, we still needed to do quite a bit. We through on the new axles, both intercoolers, charge pipes, accessory belt and fan, hooked up all the coolant lines, the clutch line and bled the clutch, the Y-pipe up top, the airbox, routed all the vacuum lines as needed, added fluids, etc.
New axles in and looking nice and pertty:
Since we had to use the timing belt covers from the S4 engine (the Allroad ones broke apart when the timing belt shredded), the grommets and bolt holes for the charge pipes didn’t line up. They sit slightly lower on the S4 motor, so instead of forcing them down and potentially cut themselves up on the frame rails, we just let them sit how they wanted to. They’re pretty secure there, so I don’t foresee any issues.
You can see the tabs on the bottom of the charge pipes where they wanted to sit here:
This is what $100 in fluids looks like:
Once we got everything back together and ready to go, we left the ECU unhooked and cranked the motor over for about 10 seconds to get oil flowing everywhere that hasn’t received oil in a while, namely the turbos which have been out of a car for at least 8 years now (sitting oiled in a box). Then we hooked the ECU up and tried to fire it up.
After about 5 seconds of cranking, it fired right up, but quickly died. We figured we might have flooded it after cranking it without the ECU for so long, so we let it sit for about 15 minutes and cleaned up a bit. When we tried it again it fired up almost immediately, but again died out just as quick.
Here’s a quick video of that:
So we went and checked, double checked, and then triple checked just about every connection we could think of and found nothing. We noticed a blinking light of a car with a little key, and figured that was the dreaded immobiliser light. I immediately thought this had something to do with the fact that I removed the cluster to work on it (never actually replaced the LCD), so we were googling around for solutions.
After reading through a few forum threads, I found one where a guy said he just replaced the battery in the key and it fired right up. We didn’t think it would work, but we decided to grab the spare key and try that. Sure enough, it fired right up and ran smooth.
It is making some sort of clicking noise from the very front, which we think is the mechanical fan, as it’s cracked in some places and visibly wobbly, but other than that it runs awesome. We took it around the neighborhood to test everything out, and it pulls as strong as 250hp should in a car that weighs just over two tons.
A few issues that need to be addressed:
- That (possible) fan noise
- The turn signal stalk has an issue that causes a very, very annoying noise (fairly common on these)
- The tire rub is pretty bad on tight turns
- The check engine light is on until I get a tune that will exclude the deleted SAI
Other than that, I’m just going to drive it for a while and get things sorted out before I even think of offroading it. I need to sort out the tire rub (probably some trimming and a larger spacer), and I NEED a good skid plate before doing anything off the pavement. The oil pan and filter are waaayy too vulnerable as they sit right now, completely unprotected.
More updates as they come...