“Thunder, light rain, BB King, & an old engine. Saturday nights don’t get much better than this. “
My goal is to get 195/2000 moving under its own power by Christmas. I’m not entirely sure that’s going to happen, but I decided to make some progress this weekend.
Here’s what I started with. The valve cover is raised because I have all the cam retainer bolts only started (to keep me from losing them or mixing anything up). I’m hoping to score a set of Evo VIII cams for this engine before all is said and done. The $700 it would cost me to pick up a set of high-lift/short-duration Kelford or Piper rally grinds (or even a $500 set of Forced Performance FP1X grinds) is best spent elsewhere at this point, methinks.
The “God Bolt” (only one of its kind on the entire vehicle) is one tough mother. I had to drop the oil pan, wedge a piece of wood between the crankshaft couterweights and block before going Breaker Bar Inception on this bad boy. You’re looking at a breaker bar within a breaker bar within a breaker bar - I had a 3ft crow bar slipped inside a 2ft length of pipe over an 18-inch Craftsman 1/2″ drive breaker.
The bolt cracking loose was so loud, I thought I’d damaged the crankshaft. (Hey. We’re talking physics, here.)
GREAT SUCCESS.
My dog, Mia, wasn’t much help, but she kept me company.
Here’s the front case/oil pump with the crank and oil pump sprockets removed. The small sprocket top left is for the front balance shaft. The rear balance shaft is bolted in behind the castle nut above the spindle lower right. (Balance shafts are also known as “silent shafts,” as they spin opposite the crankshaft at double speed to neutralize second-order vibrations for passengers.)
Because A) I’ve spent time trying to help friends figure out which bolts go where on these things in the past and B) it might be a couple weeks before I go to install the new oil pump on this engine, I cleaned the bolts up nice, put them in the box with the new pump, and whipped up this picture, which shows the location of each bolt overlaid on the picture above.
I arranged all the bolts on the floor next to each other. They are all at the same scale, relative each other. Hope this helps someone.
click for larger image
With the balance shafts removed, I took a quick picture of them side-by-side. The front can be completely removed, but I’m debating milling the rear down to use instead of the stub shaft included in my balance shaft elimination kit (BSEK).
For those who aren’t already familiar, the front shaft is spun by a small belt that runs behind the timing belt. If it fails, it can take out the t-belt, potentially destroying the engine (piston-to-valve interference). Since the rear shaft is spun by the timing belt, running a stub shaft to replace it can result in uneven wear on the pump internals, resulting in metal debris in the oil supply. Never a good thing. Turning the counterweight down on a mill reduces the weight considerably while providing for a truer rotation in the bore.
Speaking of bores, here’s a look into the block where the front balance shaft was located. Note the oil supply hole in the bearing between 3-4 o’clock in the foreground. This bearing will either be replaced or popped out and rotated to prevent a loss of oil pressure – this balance shaft will not be re-installed at all.
And here’s a look into the block where the rear balance shaft is located.
One of the hardest parts of this job was removing the front case gasket. This is one of the hottest locations on the engine, as hot oil and coolant (you can make out the round outline of the water pump at the top of the picture) are pumped through the entire lump from this area. These gaskets just get baked on.
After nearly an hour and two brand new razor blades ground down to dangerously dull edges, it looks like this. Still not clean enough for my liking, so I’ll probably take another blade and some acetone or something to everything before the new case and pumps are installed.
And here we have “after;” my stopping point for the evening. The oil filter housing is draining the filter into my catch pan (will be replaced with a 90 DSM housing and remote oil cooler), and the oil pan is full of all the odds and ends removed this evening.
Tomorrow, after a quick Skype with my Gearbox Magazine partner in the Netherlands, Dennis, I’ll be heading to the shop to do the following:
+ Bead blast and/or chemical bath
— oil pan
— cam gears
— coolant hard lines
— exhaust heat shield
— spare valve cover (might paint it red)
+ Clamp camshafts in a vice to remove cam gears
+ Cut out a couple custom gaskets for the Cyclone intake manifold
Should be a good day. I pretty much have everything I need to get this engine back together save the desired cams. Once it’s assembled, I’ll bring the wire harness over with an eye on refurbishing it. A neat project I’ve got in mind for the wiring is building a sub-harness just for the engine and transmission so I can simply undo two electrical connections before pulling the engine/trans in the future.
Pressing on regardless…