A diary of my first engine swap
11-12-06, 02:23 AM
#1
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Thread Starter
A diary of my first engine swap
If you read "White Smoke, Burning Coolant, Oh ****!" you know I've been having engine trouble and it's come down to replacing the motor, so I've embarked on my first ever engine swap, in a car port, in the middle of winter, with no means of alternate transportation. Exiting! Since I'm not ready to start modifying the car just yet, I'm swapping in a stock motor. This is much easier and a lot cheaper since everybody wants to swap in a 13BT or something instead of the stock motor. I'm getting a used longblock with front cover and not much else for $500. The motor is absolutely filthy and it doesn't have a pan or a flywheel, but it was rebuilt a few years ago and only used for two or three years, so I consider it a good deal. It also means I have to strip down the old motor and swap everything over to the new one. I've decided to keep a diary of my progress with photos.
11-12-06, 02:23 AM
#2
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Day one: It's out! 
I just attempted what I've never done before and I actualy succeeded. It feels damn good. Of course it took me eight or nine hours. I spent the first two just labeling all the electrical couplers as I disconected them and clearing the wiring harness from around the rats nest, an absolute nightmare the way it's routed. When I hook up the new motor I'll run the wires over top and hold them down with zip ties. Than I had to disconect coolant hoses, air hoses, vacuum lines, cables, clutch slave and basicaly everything else not mechanical. There's a lot of little jobs and all of them take longer than you think, like the rad fan for example. I got a wrench on the nuts no problem, and that's how I found out that trying to loosen them will actualy turn the whole motor! I've turned the eccentric by hand before, but I never imaged a fan belt could do it. Fortunatly I had the help of my father. The two of us argue every step of the way, but we always manage to come up with a solution to every problem. It was all pretty easy until we got down to actualy unbolting the engine from the transmission. You see the hoist I rented didn't have a long enough boom. With the car raised to get to the lower bolts, the hydraulic ram hits the bumper and the arm ends up at the front of the motor. If I lower the car I can't undo the lower bolts. Typical. I should also mention at this point that the damn hoist dosn't work properly anyway! The movement is spongy and herky jerky, but I added a little motor oil to the ram (as suggested by the place I rented it from) and that seemed to aliviate it. We loosened all the tranny to engine bolts and lifted it off the mounts and then discovered that with the engine raised there wasn't enough room to get to the upper bolts! Back onto the mounts, car jack and a piece of firewood under the front of the transmission, undo the bolts, and lift. It came off the mounts, it came off the transmission, it was hanging in the air, and the stupid hoist stopped working! I had an engine hanging in my bay, from a hoist that wont lift! Unbelieveable! Of course now with the input shaft clear of the clutch splines, the motor is to far forward to fit back onto the mounts. We had to stick another jack onto it, lower it onto the cross member, disconnect the hoist, lower it, add more oil. It seemed to be working, so I hooked it back up and started lifting that motor as fast as I could. Fortunatly my dad noticed that we'd missed one wiring clamp. He was working so fast to unhook it he didn't even get his glasses on, but the first wrench he grabed happened to be the right one and we got the engine out of the bay like it was a time bomb waiting to explode. So basicaly a fun day.
I've got a few pictures here, not as many as I'd like. I got so exited I forgot to take any until the end. Tommorow I'll take the engine to Shane at SNKs Race It, who's selling me the motor, and he'll swap the flywheel over for me, than we put both engines back into my dad's van. I'll also be going to pick up all the gaskets and o-rings I need from Wolfe Mazda in Vancouver. So far they've been very helpful with finding difficult parts for me and much faster and cheaper than I'd expect. I highly recoment them to anyone here in the rainforest. More tommorow, here's the pics.
I just attempted what I've never done before and I actualy succeeded. It feels damn good. Of course it took me eight or nine hours. I spent the first two just labeling all the electrical couplers as I disconected them and clearing the wiring harness from around the rats nest, an absolute nightmare the way it's routed. When I hook up the new motor I'll run the wires over top and hold them down with zip ties. Than I had to disconect coolant hoses, air hoses, vacuum lines, cables, clutch slave and basicaly everything else not mechanical. There's a lot of little jobs and all of them take longer than you think, like the rad fan for example. I got a wrench on the nuts no problem, and that's how I found out that trying to loosen them will actualy turn the whole motor! I've turned the eccentric by hand before, but I never imaged a fan belt could do it. Fortunatly I had the help of my father. The two of us argue every step of the way, but we always manage to come up with a solution to every problem. It was all pretty easy until we got down to actualy unbolting the engine from the transmission. You see the hoist I rented didn't have a long enough boom. With the car raised to get to the lower bolts, the hydraulic ram hits the bumper and the arm ends up at the front of the motor. If I lower the car I can't undo the lower bolts. Typical. I should also mention at this point that the damn hoist dosn't work properly anyway! The movement is spongy and herky jerky, but I added a little motor oil to the ram (as suggested by the place I rented it from) and that seemed to aliviate it. We loosened all the tranny to engine bolts and lifted it off the mounts and then discovered that with the engine raised there wasn't enough room to get to the upper bolts! Back onto the mounts, car jack and a piece of firewood under the front of the transmission, undo the bolts, and lift. It came off the mounts, it came off the transmission, it was hanging in the air, and the stupid hoist stopped working! I had an engine hanging in my bay, from a hoist that wont lift! Unbelieveable! Of course now with the input shaft clear of the clutch splines, the motor is to far forward to fit back onto the mounts. We had to stick another jack onto it, lower it onto the cross member, disconnect the hoist, lower it, add more oil. It seemed to be working, so I hooked it back up and started lifting that motor as fast as I could. Fortunatly my dad noticed that we'd missed one wiring clamp. He was working so fast to unhook it he didn't even get his glasses on, but the first wrench he grabed happened to be the right one and we got the engine out of the bay like it was a time bomb waiting to explode. So basicaly a fun day.
I've got a few pictures here, not as many as I'd like. I got so exited I forgot to take any until the end. Tommorow I'll take the engine to Shane at SNKs Race It, who's selling me the motor, and he'll swap the flywheel over for me, than we put both engines back into my dad's van. I'll also be going to pick up all the gaskets and o-rings I need from Wolfe Mazda in Vancouver. So far they've been very helpful with finding difficult parts for me and much faster and cheaper than I'd expect. I highly recoment them to anyone here in the rainforest. More tommorow, here's the pics.
Last edited by DogBox; 11-12-06 at 02:42 AM.
11-12-06, 08:54 PM
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man I am just about doing my first ever engine swap y myself. I just put a 13BT in my 86 and now I just have to plug in the starter and MAF and then I get to start her up.... You live in Vancouver, Canada or Washington? I have a short 13B block+tranny and a whole bunch of other stuff here if your ever interested.... I also have the Lower intake Mani and Upper. Well have fun doing your swap... I sure did and I'm glad I'm just about done.... It is getting terribly cold here...
11-12-06, 10:26 PM
#7
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Day two: Guess what I have two of!
I started today by pulling the old clutch off my flywheel. You can see the screwdriver bit I've used as a flywheel brake in the first picture. Good enough for the clutch bolts at least.
My flywheel is actualy in pretty decent shape, may not look it but it's pretty smooth. Damn good thing I'm doing this now though, my clutch disc is just about down to the rivets!
I spent about ten minutes getting the clutch off, and the rest of about two hours getting the engine properly secured in my dad's van. You can see the 2x4s under the pan and the hoist chains used to hold the thing down. They're tied off to chassis anchore points in the back and there are two straps at the front running to the bars that would normally hold the rear bench. I DO NOT want this thing moving on me. Than it was off to SNK's to get the new motor. I had him swap over the flywheel since it shurely would have caused me nothing but grief to do it without air tools. It was one hell of a slow drive trying to keep one and than two engines from moving in the back and a few people honked at me for crawling around corners. Oh well. Two rotaries make for a lovely sight though, don't they?
You may have also noticed that I left in bright daylight and came back after dark. It's actualy only around five in the second picture but it gets dark early here in winter. It's getting colder too. Lousy time to do an engine swap really. I also picked up a new clutch kit on the way back. The new engine doesn't have a pan so I hung my old engine from the hoist and pulled it off. One hell of a mess. Now I have to strip down the old engine and clean everything. The cleaning part really sucks and it's what takes the most time on a job like this. Unfortunatly I can't start assembling the new motor until tuesday at the earliest. Wolfe Mazda has all of my gaskets, but their parts department isn't open until tuesday. Figures. They managed to keep sales open somehow. At least the price is pretty good. I'm getting all the gaskets and o-rings I need for about $50. I'll also have to return that thrice damn hoist that always quits working when there's something heavy hanging from it.
There is something that worries me though. As I turn the new engine over by hand, looking into the exhaust ports, I can see quite a bit of oil collected on the front apex seals. Should I be worried about this? Do I need to find another engine? All three seals are pushing oil like scoops and they've picked up quite a lot while there's virtualy none on the rear apex seals.
I started today by pulling the old clutch off my flywheel. You can see the screwdriver bit I've used as a flywheel brake in the first picture. Good enough for the clutch bolts at least.
My flywheel is actualy in pretty decent shape, may not look it but it's pretty smooth. Damn good thing I'm doing this now though, my clutch disc is just about down to the rivets!
I spent about ten minutes getting the clutch off, and the rest of about two hours getting the engine properly secured in my dad's van. You can see the 2x4s under the pan and the hoist chains used to hold the thing down. They're tied off to chassis anchore points in the back and there are two straps at the front running to the bars that would normally hold the rear bench. I DO NOT want this thing moving on me. Than it was off to SNK's to get the new motor. I had him swap over the flywheel since it shurely would have caused me nothing but grief to do it without air tools. It was one hell of a slow drive trying to keep one and than two engines from moving in the back and a few people honked at me for crawling around corners. Oh well. Two rotaries make for a lovely sight though, don't they?
You may have also noticed that I left in bright daylight and came back after dark. It's actualy only around five in the second picture but it gets dark early here in winter. It's getting colder too. Lousy time to do an engine swap really. I also picked up a new clutch kit on the way back. The new engine doesn't have a pan so I hung my old engine from the hoist and pulled it off. One hell of a mess. Now I have to strip down the old engine and clean everything. The cleaning part really sucks and it's what takes the most time on a job like this. Unfortunatly I can't start assembling the new motor until tuesday at the earliest. Wolfe Mazda has all of my gaskets, but their parts department isn't open until tuesday. Figures. They managed to keep sales open somehow. At least the price is pretty good. I'm getting all the gaskets and o-rings I need for about $50. I'll also have to return that thrice damn hoist that always quits working when there's something heavy hanging from it.
There is something that worries me though. As I turn the new engine over by hand, looking into the exhaust ports, I can see quite a bit of oil collected on the front apex seals. Should I be worried about this? Do I need to find another engine? All three seals are pushing oil like scoops and they've picked up quite a lot while there's virtualy none on the rear apex seals.
Last edited by DogBox; 11-12-06 at 10:42 PM.
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11-19-06, 01:43 AM
#8
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Thread Starter
Ok I've been a bit lazy with updates. In fact I did some work on monday and still havn't posted it yet. Oh well, here goes.
Day Three(Monday): stripped down
Got the motor all stripped down early monday. God the area under the water pump is dirty. Hardly took any time at all though. Lloyd's move it really does wonders. Unfortunatly I did manage to bend the oil pipe trying to get it off the front cover, but the damage is pretty slight so I'm going to try and use it. Have to keep an eye on the oil pressure for a little while.
Note the allignment marks on the distributor. Here's a tip, nailpolish is damn near indelible. Ask your sister/girlfriend/buddy whose a Bowie fan. Nothing marks a distributor or a steering wheel or a hood quite like it, which would have been a good thing in retrospect becuase I forgot to mark the hood before I took it off. Oops.
Then there was cleaning. That takes forever. Things do look nice after though.
Day Three(Monday): stripped down
Got the motor all stripped down early monday. God the area under the water pump is dirty. Hardly took any time at all though. Lloyd's move it really does wonders. Unfortunatly I did manage to bend the oil pipe trying to get it off the front cover, but the damage is pretty slight so I'm going to try and use it. Have to keep an eye on the oil pressure for a little while.
Note the allignment marks on the distributor. Here's a tip, nailpolish is damn near indelible. Ask your sister/girlfriend/buddy whose a Bowie fan. Nothing marks a distributor or a steering wheel or a hood quite like it, which would have been a good thing in retrospect becuase I forgot to mark the hood before I took it off. Oops.
Then there was cleaning. That takes forever. Things do look nice after though.
11-19-06, 02:31 AM
#9
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Thread Starter
Didn't get much work done during the week. The sun is going down before five these days, and I don't have a garage. Had an interesting experiance on tuesday though. I was in a shop that specialises in Corvettes and they were working on a Honda (Yeah, I know). It belonged to one of the guys there. Anway, they had the engine out. It was a pretty standard four cylinder and they had it stripped down to a long block, so I asked about it, the conversation went something like this.
Me: How much does one of these things way?
Mechanic: You could probably pick it up yourself.
Me: OK.
So I planted my feet on either side of the thing, crouched a little, got a grip on either end of the block, and picked it up with surprising ease. These little aluminum four bangers are light! Damn light! On the other hand I'd been lugging around a couple of 12As for the last few days and they are not light. Makes me realise why people like to stick aluminum V8s in RX 7s. I still hate it when they do it though.
I've got my old motor down to basicaly a long block now, so I'm going to have to weigh the thing before I store it.
Thursday was pretty busy. I went after work to get the last of my gaskets and o-rings from Wolfe Mazda. They managed to get all of them right except for the oil pipe sealing washers. Oh well, I'll use the old ones. I also got a little work done late that night. Installed water pump, distributor, OMP, and a few sensors and miscellanea. Here's a hint, OMP before water pump.
Me: How much does one of these things way?
Mechanic: You could probably pick it up yourself.
Me: OK.
So I planted my feet on either side of the thing, crouched a little, got a grip on either end of the block, and picked it up with surprising ease. These little aluminum four bangers are light! Damn light! On the other hand I'd been lugging around a couple of 12As for the last few days and they are not light. Makes me realise why people like to stick aluminum V8s in RX 7s. I still hate it when they do it though.
I've got my old motor down to basicaly a long block now, so I'm going to have to weigh the thing before I store it.Thursday was pretty busy. I went after work to get the last of my gaskets and o-rings from Wolfe Mazda. They managed to get all of them right except for the oil pipe sealing washers. Oh well, I'll use the old ones. I also got a little work done late that night. Installed water pump, distributor, OMP, and a few sensors and miscellanea. Here's a hint, OMP before water pump.
11-19-06, 03:45 AM
#10
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Thread Starter
Day Four: It's in.
Yes, I managed to go from a pile of parts in the driveway to an engine in the car in one day, even with all the stupidity with the hoist. What hoist you say? I'll get to that in a second, but first, look at my nice clean engine!
Well OK so it isn't perfectly clean, but it's a hell of an improvement on when I braught it back from SNK's. I'll remind you in case you don't remmember.
Oh, and the first picture is obviously from before thursdays work, but I never got around to posting it.
Anyway I started today with evan more cleaning. I seem to do a lot of that. I was cleaning up the engine mating flanges for the intake and exhaust manifold, as well as the manifolds themselves, when I realised my new engine didn't have any studs for the intake mnaifold. No problem, I'll use the ones from the old engine. I also dont have a stud remover. No problem times two. You can pop out a stud with two nuts. Just thread them on, than holding each one with a wrench, tighten them up against each other. Than shoot a little penetrating oil onto the stud where it enters the block, being careful NOT to lubricate the two nuts you're trying to use for purchase, get a wrench around the inner nut, and unscrew the whole mess. Than you can use the a wrench on the outer nut to tighten it into the new block and seperate the two nuts with a pair of wrenches again. Easy.
Well it worked great on the first one, but on the second one I tightened up the nuts a little too tight and ended up stripping the stud and both nuts! Evan better, those nuts were the ones that were suposed to hold on the intake manifold. Now I'm really screwed. It's these kind of things that can cost hours of delay when one is working at home. Fortunatly the Lordco in town had a stud that was close enough. The only M8 nuts they had were half inch instead of 12mm though. I abolutaly loath to put imperial fasteners in my car, but I didn't have the time to find anything better.
Why anyone would put an imperial hex on a metric nut is completaly beyond me, except to say that it is the fault of all you Americans and your insistance on continuing to use such an archaic and complicated measuring system. And of course, most of our tools and parts come from the states, so I have to have all these damn imperial wrenches with insane sizes like 11/32.
If the Americans would just use metric, I could get by 99% of the time with just a 10mm, a 12mm, a 14mm, and a 17mm.
It all worked out though. My mum offered to pick up the hoist I'd aranged to rent so I could keep working. I managed to get everything on but the clutch and oil pan by the time she got back. The centre bolt for the rats nest is an abolsute bitch by the way.
That's when I found out the lifting tackle I'd been promised with the hoist consisted of an aproximately 15cm piece of chain with one hook the end. It was too small to evan pass another chain though it. Great. Evan better they don't actualy rent lifting tackle at all and I only had half an hour to return the stupid useless thing or I'd have to pay for the rental. The weather was great today and I was hoping to take maximum advantage of the available sunlight. So much for that. I had to drive all the way out to Bridgeport Road in Richmond to return the thing. On the way back I stopped in Ladner and found a better hoist for about the same price. Unfortunatly their lifting tackle was designed to lift by the cylinder head bolts, which obviously doesn't do me much good. So they sent me to a marine place for some chain. Predictably they were all out of chain. They told me there was a hardware store in Ladner village, just a block away, but no one could seem to agree on what it was called. I spent about ten minutes driving back and forth before noticing the tiny sign on the hardware store that looked nothing like a hardware store. I don't shop in Ladner much, obviously. A very helpful man there sold me a length of chain with two hooks for ~$20. What the hell, it's just evan more money after all, right?
Anyway, by the time all that lunacy was concluded the daylight was long gone and it was getting cold, but I was determined to finnish assembly of the engine and get it installed. I'm afraid I didn't take too many pictures here, but I did snap this one of the bottom of the engine just before installing the pan.
I'll also mention, if you're ever changing a throwout bearing with the engine out and transmission being supported by a jack, and find yourself unable to pull the release fork back, make sure the transmission isn't up so high that the top of the fork is binding against the firewall.
Getting the engine to slide onto the input shaft splines isn't as easy as it sounds, and I though it sounded pretty hard. Even once you get the engine hanging from the hoist evanly and at the right angle, it won't just pop onto them. You can spend ten minutes just trying to get it to move back 2mm. You'll be endlessly repositioning the engine and the tansmission, levering this way and that, but when it finaly slides in there and comes down on those mounts... well you know.
It's all bolted in now and I've got some of the hoses and such reconected, so I called it a day a few hours ago. I can't start it till late tomorow afternoone becuase that's how long it will take for the gasket maker I used on the pan gasket and the friction fit coolant pipe to fully set, but I hope to have it ready to run by than, and I'm imensely nervous about what will happan when I turn that key. Wish me luck guys.
Yes, I managed to go from a pile of parts in the driveway to an engine in the car in one day, even with all the stupidity with the hoist. What hoist you say? I'll get to that in a second, but first, look at my nice clean engine!
Well OK so it isn't perfectly clean, but it's a hell of an improvement on when I braught it back from SNK's. I'll remind you in case you don't remmember.
Oh, and the first picture is obviously from before thursdays work, but I never got around to posting it.
Anyway I started today with evan more cleaning. I seem to do a lot of that. I was cleaning up the engine mating flanges for the intake and exhaust manifold, as well as the manifolds themselves, when I realised my new engine didn't have any studs for the intake mnaifold. No problem, I'll use the ones from the old engine. I also dont have a stud remover. No problem times two. You can pop out a stud with two nuts. Just thread them on, than holding each one with a wrench, tighten them up against each other. Than shoot a little penetrating oil onto the stud where it enters the block, being careful NOT to lubricate the two nuts you're trying to use for purchase, get a wrench around the inner nut, and unscrew the whole mess. Than you can use the a wrench on the outer nut to tighten it into the new block and seperate the two nuts with a pair of wrenches again. Easy.
Well it worked great on the first one, but on the second one I tightened up the nuts a little too tight and ended up stripping the stud and both nuts! Evan better, those nuts were the ones that were suposed to hold on the intake manifold. Now I'm really screwed. It's these kind of things that can cost hours of delay when one is working at home. Fortunatly the Lordco in town had a stud that was close enough. The only M8 nuts they had were half inch instead of 12mm though. I abolutaly loath to put imperial fasteners in my car, but I didn't have the time to find anything better.
Why anyone would put an imperial hex on a metric nut is completaly beyond me, except to say that it is the fault of all you Americans and your insistance on continuing to use such an archaic and complicated measuring system. And of course, most of our tools and parts come from the states, so I have to have all these damn imperial wrenches with insane sizes like 11/32.
If the Americans would just use metric, I could get by 99% of the time with just a 10mm, a 12mm, a 14mm, and a 17mm.It all worked out though. My mum offered to pick up the hoist I'd aranged to rent so I could keep working. I managed to get everything on but the clutch and oil pan by the time she got back. The centre bolt for the rats nest is an abolsute bitch by the way.
That's when I found out the lifting tackle I'd been promised with the hoist consisted of an aproximately 15cm piece of chain with one hook the end. It was too small to evan pass another chain though it. Great. Evan better they don't actualy rent lifting tackle at all and I only had half an hour to return the stupid useless thing or I'd have to pay for the rental. The weather was great today and I was hoping to take maximum advantage of the available sunlight. So much for that. I had to drive all the way out to Bridgeport Road in Richmond to return the thing. On the way back I stopped in Ladner and found a better hoist for about the same price. Unfortunatly their lifting tackle was designed to lift by the cylinder head bolts, which obviously doesn't do me much good. So they sent me to a marine place for some chain. Predictably they were all out of chain. They told me there was a hardware store in Ladner village, just a block away, but no one could seem to agree on what it was called. I spent about ten minutes driving back and forth before noticing the tiny sign on the hardware store that looked nothing like a hardware store. I don't shop in Ladner much, obviously. A very helpful man there sold me a length of chain with two hooks for ~$20. What the hell, it's just evan more money after all, right?
Anyway, by the time all that lunacy was concluded the daylight was long gone and it was getting cold, but I was determined to finnish assembly of the engine and get it installed. I'm afraid I didn't take too many pictures here, but I did snap this one of the bottom of the engine just before installing the pan.
I'll also mention, if you're ever changing a throwout bearing with the engine out and transmission being supported by a jack, and find yourself unable to pull the release fork back, make sure the transmission isn't up so high that the top of the fork is binding against the firewall.
Getting the engine to slide onto the input shaft splines isn't as easy as it sounds, and I though it sounded pretty hard. Even once you get the engine hanging from the hoist evanly and at the right angle, it won't just pop onto them. You can spend ten minutes just trying to get it to move back 2mm. You'll be endlessly repositioning the engine and the tansmission, levering this way and that, but when it finaly slides in there and comes down on those mounts... well you know.
It's all bolted in now and I've got some of the hoses and such reconected, so I called it a day a few hours ago. I can't start it till late tomorow afternoone becuase that's how long it will take for the gasket maker I used on the pan gasket and the friction fit coolant pipe to fully set, but I hope to have it ready to run by than, and I'm imensely nervous about what will happan when I turn that key. Wish me luck guys.
Last edited by DogBox; 11-19-06 at 04:02 AM.
11-19-06, 05:06 AM
#11
Lives on the Forum
Good work man, especially with taking all the time to clean things up. Here's a tip for you on those dreaded fan bolts that makes it very simple: just place a screwdriver across two of the bolt heads and use that as leverage to keep things from turning. Loosen them all up before removing any of them. Works for installation too. 
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