Welcome to the next installment of The ZipMonster's Saga! Zippy springs a leak, Chuck blows a gasket, and we find a BP engine just looking for a good home... At this point Zippy was essentially complete, except for one HUGE detail - the engine. So, I take a deep breath, and dive into the engine compartment. Cleaned up the empty compartment with some Simple Green (good stuff). #1's engine was apart from the head up (had a new reman head) and #2 was completely together; it started right up and ran but with slightly low compression (around 150 -160). I had bought a head gasket set off of Ebay, bought a pan gasket and various seals from O'Reilly Auto Parts. So I intstalled the reman head on #2 engine block, used various parts (comparing each as I went along to insure that I used the best of each) from both engines to get one complete engine... or so I thought! The auto tranny from #2 didn't work in any gear, and the auto tranny in #1 was an unknown because the engine was apart and there was no way to check the tranny. So, after all of this I still didn't know if the car would actually MOVE! One positive point was that #1 only had around 80,000 miles on it, so I thought that I had a 50/50 chance that this tranny would work. I bolted the auto trans to the engine and installed it into the engine compartment. Hooked up all of the electrical, hoses, half shafts, exhaust, etc. Filled with fluids (don't forget this step - No, I haven't done this before but have heard of a few people that have!), installed the battery and fired her up. Checked for leaks, and then tried out the tranny by rowing through the gears, and... Yes! the tranny acted like it was going to work! Let the engine warm up, checked for leaks again and took her out for a test drive. Tranny shifted fine, car drove straight down the road which was good considering where it had been hit and I was a happy individual. It runs, it drives - it's a Zippy! So I drove the car the next day (about 30 miles)and it ran as good as you can expect from a stock 1.3 engine. Open the hood to check fluids and low and behold, there was oil running down the head from the cam cover gasket. Removed cam cover and ground down the bolt bushings about .025 to get a little more squish on the gasket. Take it out for another test drive, check again and still had oil coming from the cam cover gasket. Pulled the spark plugs, gave it a compression check and was still down on compression (about the same 150 - 160). So I checked to see how much piston ring set was - around $80 - $100. So now it was a choice to try to find a 1.3, a 1.6 salvage engine or overhaul the present engine. Well, as luck would have it, we couldn't find a salvage engine for the right price, so I took the plunge to rebuild the engine. (At this point, I'm still not thinking about a BP engine, just trying to get a cheap running vehicle.) I bought a set of rings, pan gasket, etc., and made sure I had everything I needed for the rebuild. Pulled engine and tranny (I was getting to be really good at this by now), removed the tranny from the engine, took engine apart, and found that the top compression rings were stuck in the ring lands. Modified the width of my ring groove cleaner/cutter blades and cleaned up the grooves so the new rings would fit with the proper side clearance, deglazed the cylinders, checked the fit of the new rings, and once again as luck would have it the end gaps were only about .004" smaller than the used rings I had removed! (Not good). So, any one that knows about engines will probally be able to figure out where this is going... Well, I spent the next couple of days trying to figure out what to do. Didn't want to put any more money into this project than I absolutely had to; it was quickly turning into a black hole. I am a fairly anal person at heart, so what I went ahead and did was almost below my minimum acceptable levels! I won't ever compromise on safety; if one of my vehicles isn't safe, or if a part is not safe, it doesn't leave the garage. Since it came down to a money issue in this case, I had to try to work with the best parts that I had available to me, that I knew would at least work. I went ahead and assembled the engine with the new rings, (while installing the pistons into the block with the new rings, I was on the last piston #4, and broke the top compression ring - had popped out from underneath the ring compressor. Ended up using the old #4 top ring.) old/new head gasket, new pan gasket, etc. Once again dropped the engine back in, hooked everything up, added fluids, hooked up the battery and fired it up. As usual, it fired right up and ran fine. Took it out for a drive, and it felt the same as before. I got home, checked for oil leaks and guess what? Still had the same oil leak, only worse. Checked compression again, and it was the same as before the ring change, except for #4, which was 136. I drove it like this for the next week - hey, I needed transportation - but the oil leak was leaving a nice size puddle on the driveway everyday. Something needed to be done; I had to either pitch this project, or fix it right (with, of course, the least amount of money possible, but still with a good end result). Drip, Drip, Drip goes the Zip! Zippy is still leaking oil, and I needed a new cheap engine. Depending on what was available in the Tulsa area, and hoping to find something with a reasonable price, I knew what I needed to look for. I had been lurking at FordFestiva.Com for a while, and had paid attention to what the other guys over there were doing; what worked and what didn't. We spent the next week on the phone to local salvage yards, trying to try to find something reasonable and we weren't having a whole lot of luck. As a last resort, on Friday morning my wonderful wife (Sarah) who has been patient and supportive through this whole thing, called the Ford salvage in Locust Grove, Oklahoma, and they said they thought they had 4 EGT engines with around 100,000 miles on them, and the price sounds good. I'm relieved; it's finally looking better. Saturday morning, my father and I went to the salvage to see what they actually had. (We had gotten parts from this salvage a few years earlier, but generally don't call them because typically we can find what we need much closer.) They actually did have 4 EGT engines that were in different states of completeness. One was missing the oil pan, one had the timing cover off, one had the cam cover removed, and one was totally complete with only 50,000 miles on it. Most of the engines had oil in the throttle body (possibly blowby), most had an oil leak or two and the 50,000 mile engine had lots of surface rust on everything; too much to even consider. At this point I wasn't jumping for joy; I had been hoping we would find these engines to be in better condition. As we were almost ready to leave, we were walking through with the owner, and tucked away in a corner of the building was an engine that looked similar to what I was looking for. Upon further investigation it turns out to be a BP engine out of an LX-E and it was totally complete to boot! We looked this engine over as carefully and as best we could, and couldn't find a whole lot wrong with it - the cam cover gasket had been leaking, there were mud dauber nests all over the hoses, and water had been dripping from the roof of the building it was being stored in, right on top of the cam cover so it was dusty and dirty. Pulled the oil filler cap off and the cam looked pretty clean. Since the roof had been leaking on the cam cover, two of the spark plug holes were filled with rusty water, and the wires were rusty on their ends; the other two holes were filled with oil. So we asked the owner about this particular engine, and he couldn't find any info about it! All of the engines at this particular salvage always have a paper tag attached to them with the mileage, year, and vehicle, but this particular engine didn't have a tag. All we could tell was what was scribbled in yellow marker on the exhaust manifold cover which was 92 LX E, and some zero's so mileage was uncertain. He was asking $250.00 per engine for the other engines, $450.00 for the 50,000 engine and since this one didn't have a tag he said I'll give it to you for the $250.00 price. A complete 1.8 BP out of a (probably/hopefully not hot rodded) LXE for $250.00 dollars - I was about to die! The BP comes home... Now had to figure how to get the BP home, about 45 miles away. We don't own a pick up truck, so I told the salvage yard owner I would need a couple of days to put some transportation together. He turned around and told me that he has to go to Tulsa on Monday morning and would be glad to drop it off at the house - FOR FREE! I paid for the engine and left the salvage happier than anyone can imagine! Coming soon... It starts to come together. Zippy continues to drip, the BP goes on the stand, and #2 is still useful - as a test bed!