Hi I’m new here any help would be greatly appreciated. I recently bought a salvage yard 360/5.9 magnum engine with a 30 day warranty I’ve looked it over and it all seems very well maintained I can tell it has a few new parts such as valve cover gaskets a new distributor and and and throttle body I was wanting to go ahead while it’s out and replace the water pump gasket oil pan gasket and the timing chain cover gasket I’ll be using felpro brand everything but while I’m in there would it be best to buy a new water pump and fan clutch I already have replace the blade on it and my other question is does anyone recommend swapping to a double roller timing chain while I’m doing all this

 

I would go with the water pump, and timing chain/gears.....

 

ok thank u so much I will do that

 

double roller chains are more for higher performance engines , but won't hurt anything .

 

Is your choice and I have no issue with replacing the chain .... absolutely replace the water pump .... they sit for who knows how long and seals dry up.

The chain you can remove the distributor cap and check the play in it.
Remove the cap and watch the rotor, then rotate the engine by hand and watch when the rotor moves.
Then rotate the engine by hand in the opposite direction and watch how far the lower crank pulley moves before the rotor button moves.

Do this a few times and you can see how much play is in your timing chain .... A chain has too have some play, I'm thinking 1/2"-3/4" play is kinda normal .... If you have more, probably want to replace it.

What I'm getting at, it probably has a OEM chain on it good for 300K miles .... you do not say how many miles are on the engine in question ...... Possibility you may install a chain that is poor quality, not last as long as the one you already have.

I would check the condition of the chain, if it is good I would run it ..... if you know the engine already has 300K on it .... maybe replace it anyways.

 

Since the engine is out, you can replace a bunch of things that are aggravating to replace in situ. (Fancy word I learned in school. It just means in place.)

Water pump since they like to leak. With the pump off, it's just a few more bolts to pull the t. chain cover. This would be a good time to replace the timing chain. They are good for around 180,000 miles on these but will usually have some wear and commensurate loss of power. I'd pull the intake and check the plenum seal. It usually gives out at around 150K. When mine failed I went from a quart of oil every 600-700 miles to every 75 miles and it was misfiring BAD. It's easier to do on an engine stand. I'd drop the oil pan and clean it because you don't know if anything is in there. I'd also replace the oil sending unit because it's way back in the back and hard to get to.

One thing I do when I refurbish a used engine is pop the expansion plugs out of it if they are soft at all. They are a REAL pain to replace in the vehicle. When you do that, replace ALL of them and flush the block to get all the sand and rust out of it in case the coolant wasn't kept up.I did a BB 400 once and filled a 5 gallon bucket most of the way with rust and sand. The sand is left over from the casting process when they made the engine. That engine was run hard for 25,000 miles and newer ever got overly hot.

 

What's it going to used for? If you are putting it in a truck you will be using a lot then go over everything. Do you know how many miles are on it?

 

I installed a good, used 5.9 engine in my truck. The original engine that was in the truck was used when the truck had a snow plow on it and the engine developed such a bad case of rust that working on it became very painful.

Before I installed the used engine, I updated several parts. First, I pulled each freeze plug on the motor and heads and installed deep cup replacement brass freeze plugs (engine block takes 1-5/8" plugs and the heads takes 1-1/4" plugs). I also dug and washed out any rust/much from around each cylinder while the freeze plugs were out to help with engine cooling. I did this before installing the engine, as you can't access the rear freeze plugs on the motor without dropping the transmission. I also changed the timing chain to a good double roller timing chain and swapped out the water pump for a new unit. I pulled the oil pan and installed a new high volume oil pump and also replaced the pickup that was covered with sludge, in addition to cleaning the oil pan. To date, I've not had any issues at all out of the used engine and it runs great.