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Appreciate the kind words everyone. Not much progress lately after some time getting the garage upgraded with some insulation and air conditioning to make it bearable to work this summer over the Texas heat and getting the hoist and stand assembled.
I want to get the engine pulled soon-ish, so that I can get the turbos pulled and sent off to BNR. I have no idea what the turnaround on those are, but like most everything thesedays, I imagine it's not short.
I did pull the hood latch -- which promptly broke. So that was a bullet dodged. I literally put ounces of side pressure on the green plastic catch and it snapped in half. A replacement was already forthcoming, but super glad I didn't have to deal with that at some point. I disassembled the latch, cleaned, painted, and lubed it. Simple task, but it sits rather prominent there at the front, so didn't seem right to neglect it.
I did the same for the headlight assemblies. Technically, outside of the black plastic and, of course, the covers, they are completely invisible. But I did a full refresh on those too. New paint, hardware, re-wrapped the small harness, etc. At some point, I'll replace the headlights themselves with HID/LED projectors. The lack of body color paint on the under-side of the covers bugs me too... if I remember, when I paint the engine bay, I'll try to hit the headlight covers too.
Wow, well done! The before and after photos give me hope for my parts. Would love to know your process for the headlight assembly cleaning/restoration process.
Thanks to the posts on this forum I was able to remove the engine absolutely without any issue whatsoever. In fact, as far as the actual removal itself goes, I would say that it was remarkably easy. And I did it entirely on my own having never removed an engine from a car before. I followed all the steps, gave the engine a bit of a lift, jiggled it a bit, and it popped right out.
The only issue at all was that the top-center bell-housing bolt just about did me in. It was in there so tight at such an impossible angle to reach properly that I nearly completely rounded the head off and ended up having to use a bolt extractor and a 1/2" impact and even that barely worked. I've never seen a bolt that easy so each to reach yet so impossible to actually get a decent hold on due to how the firewall lip was in the way. In hindsight, as I type this, removing the UIM may have helped a bit but probably not enough to really bare down on it like I needed to have a chance of loosening it.
Dealing stupid retaining ring on the clutch which seems to be a rite of passage, wasn't really a problem. It absolutely would have been without advice and how-to's though. Still, one thing that worked for that I didn't really see explicily mentioned in any write-ups was manipulating the throw-out bearing while using the screwdriver. Without doing that, there was seemingly too much tension on the ring and i could not get it to release despite all my efforts. No amount of just twisting the screwdriver was going to move that throwout bearing. But, by pressing on the bearing arm by reaching through the hole that the slave cylinder was, I moved it just a fraction of an inch and then literally only had to press on the ring with the screwdriver to get it to fall away.
Makes me wonder if some of the difference in why it's easier for some people than others (some say they just reached it and twisted the screwdriver) is a function of whether they removed or did not remove the slave first which may change the tension on the bearing and/or different tensions on the spring may require manipulating the throwout bearing more than others.
I opted to pull the engine without the transmission because the general consensus seemed that was the far easier route to go, especially without multiple people to help guide it all out. Now though I'm left wondering how easy it'll be to get the transmission out separately. I'm also not looking forward to having to reinstall on my own, as lining up the bellhousing, mounts, and lowering simultaneously seems impossible. I think I'll have to marry the two together to have a chance of re-installing as a solo job.
Nice job on the removal! For getting it back in, I'd recommend you get a couple of friends to provide the extra hands, muscle & eyes needed to get it to drop back in. With the help, it's pretty easy to get the engine lined up with the tranny still in the car and get everything back together right. What works best for me was jacking up the front of the tranny a little bit to make alignment with the engine on the hoist going in easier. Once you get the tranny's input shaft lined up, and the splines engaged (rotate the e-shaft by hand until they do), the rest is easy.
The transmission's almost certainly going to come out at some point. The 5th gear synchro is shot. It's perfectly drive-able, but seems a shame to not take care of it while doing all this. I'm just thinking working on a transmission might be a bridge too far for me, and I don't relish the idea or cost of getting a transmission to a shop to have them do it.
So I think if it comes out, I'll just marry them together outside the car when it comes time to get everything back together.
With the engine out, I've already got 2 questions that don't really warrant their own thread here since they are really more out of curiosity than any real need-to-know, so maybe someone will stumble on this and be able to answer.
First, I noticed 2 lines on the vacuum manifold were not being used. Based on my reading of the old vacuum diagram, I'm 99.99% sure that this is someone doing the "double-throttle" delete at some point in the past. Seemed a standard old-school mod based on theads here from literally over 20 years ago. Anything that I need to take into consideration there?
And after pulling the turbos last night and setting them on the ground, I noticed some oil (?) had dripped out of one of the wastegate actuators. Strangely (to me), it appears to be completely clean, fresh oil and only out of one of the actuators. It certainly was not the color of the oil that came out of the engine or the lines running to the turbos. Is this indicative of some sort of blow-by on the turbos?
Slow going the past couple weeks. Too much time on video games... probably going to be the story the next few months to be honest.
Still gotta get the turbos off to BNR. He's been unresponsive on email/phone, but did post a couple days ago on FB to someone who was also having trouble reaching him to just send the turbos. So I'll get those headed that way soon.
But spent some time on the Battery Harness. Completely stripped it of all the loom and tape. Did everything short of de-pinning/re-pinning the plugs. Cleaned the 30 years of grime and oil build-up all over the plugs and wiring and went through an entire can of CRC electrical cleaner. Re-taped everything with Tesa tape, new loom, and new sleeving. This one relatively short harness has 5 different sizes each of loom and sleeving. Painted the brackets, replaced the rubber boots on the battery and the alternator ground, and polished all the ground points.
The old terminals were absolutely destroyed. Not only was the hardware completely stripped but the terminals were so thinned out from decades that the negative one was completely split.
06-13-23, 06:22 PM
