What it cost me to own a $500 car, part 35

"StudyStudyStudy" (jesterjin) 07/07/2016 at 16:15 • Filed to: None

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Started the disassembly. First the manifolds came off. Turbo manifold was fairly easy. The oil input and drain lines gave a fight, but gave way easily enough. Some of the turbo fins look a little bent, but it spins and exhibits no real shaft play. I seem to recollect them not looking great when I first installed this so I’m not sure if this is new or old.

Intake manifold put up a fight. My strut brace system was in the way so I had to remove that in order to take off the intake manifold. The pressure lines also gave quite a bit of a fight. I’ll have to remember to hook them up to the manifold for reinstallation and unhook them from the accessory as it is going to be nigh impossible to connect them from the bottom. Found the culprit, or at least one major part of it.

Then came time to take off the head. I followed the FSM to take off the nuts for the studs in the correct order. the one on the driver corner gave a fight as it sat right under the hood latch. I had to use a u-joint and an extension, both of which gave their life (pin in u-joint rattled out, and the extension lost the retaining lock ring screw) in getting that nut off, but they achieved their mission.

With the head off now I could pop the pistons out through the top. I went about taking the caps off of two that were at the bottom of the stroke then pushed them out through the top.

Then came the problem of rotating the crank, my front pulley had a trigger wheel bolted to the front of it, so off had to come the alternator, and everything else preventing me from accessing the bolt as well as the radiator. With that off I was able to rotate the crank and get the other 4 pistons out. Bores look surprisingly intact. Piston number one however moved quite freely even before I had taken the rod cap off.

The bearing can be seem to have deformed massively. It had actually shaped itself to wrap around the cap and rod and was thinned considerably. I believe I have found my culprit.

Glancing over I had noticed some particular scarring on one of the pistons a closer inspection showed severe scoring and cracking on this particular piston. Looks like this would have eventually failed even if the rods bearings had not died due to lack of lubrication.

Then I had to deal with the accessories and such. I had feared getting the crank pulley bolt off. Even with the car in gear and the hydro brake on, it seemed like it didn’t want to budge. So I decided to do the old starter trick. Brace a breaker bar near the frame and give it a quick jolt with the starter. It did the trick! Crank pulley bolt came right off. Looking at the FSM there were special tools required for removal of each pulley. I was trying to think of how I could solve this and was imitating a two point claw with my hands when the pulley moved. In fact all of them did, I was able to remove all the pulleys without any trouble.

Now all that is left is to pull the front timing cover off along with the water pump.

A friend I had borrowed the crane from a few times decided he was cleaning up and sold me his crane for pretty cheap. It is going to be a bit of a tetris puzzle to get the block out, but it seems I may be able to do so without having to bother anyone else.

Plan now is to...

Acquire an engine stand.

Pull the block out, put it up on an engine stand.

Pull the clutch, pressure plate, flywheel, crank bearing retention plate, crank caps, crank, timing cover, water pump, oil drive shaft.

Take the block and have it cleaned, new oil drive shaft bearings, new freeze plugs installed, hopefully just deglazed, inspected.

Once I have the value for the pistons, order the pistons along with the wrist pin bearing, rod bearing, ARP rod studs, flywheel friction surface.

Send the entire rotating assembly for resizing rods, crank polishing, inspection.

Then back to me for reassembly.

Higher rated pressure plate, new clutch, and the higher flowing turbo means that this thing should be able to push almost 450 to the crank. My 440 injectors are going to limit me to about 360 to the crank or 320ish to the wheels, so that will be next on the list.

Subtotal - 0

Total spent: 21974

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