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Ford WindstarIntroduced in the mid-1990s, the front-wheel-drive Ford Windstar minivan campaigned with an emphasis on, and reputation for, safety. And in the hotly contested family minivan market of the time, that was an especially solid piece of ground to be on. As long as buyers didn't need to haul adults in back on a regular basis, the Windstar served a family's needs just fine.
I have a 98 windstar, that had about 1/2 a gallon of coolant in the oil,
(strange is that it wasn't mixed) it came out when i drained the oil.
it seems as the engine is locked, tho what is causing that i don't know yet.
it has 173K on it,and was reg. serviced. I'm having problems finding a used engine around me, and was wondering what it would take to rebuild this one?
I've been a long time wrench turner, but the only fords I've worked on have been stangs. I have so many questions, I have the top end off, and been reading alot, so is there no way to pull these engines from the top?
I have a engine hoist(big one) but don't want to try the drop the bottom out thing, unless there is no way around it.
is there anyway to check how bad a engine is locked? never had one do that, is the engine junk now? any help would be great I've only got 3 weeks before school starts to get this thing running.
try attaching a ratchet to the crank pulley and see if you can spin it by hand.
i would bet that you could pull the block out from the top if you have the heads off, but couldn't tell you for sure. when i did my head gaskets, it looked like there was probably enough room to do it if it's possible to attach a hoist to the bare block.
here's the view from the top
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'98 Windstar GL 3.8L, traded in 8/4/08 for an 05 Saturn Vue
cool will give that a try, as far as the crank with a wrench I've tried, although I was way tired the night i tried i couldn't get it to move even with all the the spark plugs out of it.
I'll try to find a big breaker bar and see if i need a little more leverage.
Bryan BTW thanks for the feedback, been reading alot of your posts on here,
there's a guy on here that's done an engine swap on his van. IIRC his screen name was firstwindstar02. if you can get his attention then he probably has some good tips for you.
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'98 Windstar GL 3.8L, traded in 8/4/08 for an 05 Saturn Vue
thank you, my buddy with a shop just called me last night and he has the ford DVD's for all the years and models with pictures and everything, don't know how much that set cost him, but they are very good, he does a lot of repair work so he is going to help me swap it out at his shop. (yeah power tools)
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98 3.8L engine question 
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