A Photo Diary of a top-end rebuild. Or, The Tale of a one-armed rebuild.

[flmont]

I used heavy duty eye bolts, thru the engine mount bolt holes, fabbed a chain to them got the engine hoist connected to the chain and jacked it straight up and pulled that engine right out from under the car,..10 min. and it was free ....FM

[rob911]

Well done - great feeling removing the engine and gearbox at home, by yourself. Thanks to all who posted tips and articles here a few years back. Will get Wayne's book for my rebuild.
While you are in there......number 4 and 5
Replace "flapper boxes", the heater control valves
Skim flywheel, check balance, fit Sachs clutch kit yourself
Fit new gearbox mounts if your stick was shaking.

[BMWDavid]

Subscribed

[efhughes3]

Originally Posted by Capt. Carrera

I got everything off the top of the motor today. The plan was to remove everything as one assembly, as mentioned in Wayne’s rebuild book. I gave up on this plan pretty quickly. Mostly, I didn’t thing the fiberglass shroud would hold the weight of the fan and alternator without cracking. Plus, the alternator ground tethers everything. In the end I removed the fan & alternator, the shroud, and the EFI as three separate assemblies.

That's pretty much the way you have to do it. When some, in this case: Wayne, mentions removing the top stuff in one piece, that pretty much refers to the injection setup. The fan, alt and shroud have to come off as you did it.

LET the impact wrench on the CV bolts be a lesson to all reading this....my buddy did the same thing recently...cost a few hours extra.

At any rate, good luck on this. You'll find a lot of satisfaction in this project.

[mkimber]

Subscribed...best of luck.

[autobonrun]

Excellent post. I'm following this one myself. I really need to drop mine to reach the many oil leaks and most likely replace the clutch. 100k+ miles on this one.

I have a question on the CV/axle bolt removal. Do you just remove the bolts at the tranny and let the axle hang down or do you remove both ends? I only ask because it appears (to the inexperienced) that the axles would interfere with the drop unless they are completely out of the way.

[DaddyGlenn]

Originally Posted by autobonrun

Excellent post. I'm following this one myself. I really need to drop mine to reach the many oil leaks and most likely replace the clutch. 100k+ miles on this one.

I have a question on the CV/axle bolt removal. Do you just remove the bolts at the tranny and let the axle hang down or do you remove both ends? I only ask because it appears (to the inexperienced) that the axles would interfere with the drop unless they are completely out of the way.

Just unbolt the CVs from the tranny. You don't want to let them hang but wire them up so the ball bearings don't fall out.

[Dixie]

Karma is finally paying me back. Yesterday I got the exhaust off. No torch, no snapped studs, no stripped bolts. Yeah, ˝ the studs came out of the heads, but so what? I’d be fool not to replace every single exhaust stud anyway. Guess I'm due after 30 years of broken exhaust bolts and studs.

I did notice each bank has one black, oily, nasty, exhaust valve. One sports some early stalactite formations in the port. All the other exhaust valves sport the usual white-ish residue.

Here's a shot of the RH exhaust ports. Note the valve on the right is black and sticky looking. The other two are white.

[ianc]

I’d be fool not to replace every single exhaust stud anyway.

I would go the other way. If the studs are in there with decent threads on them, leave them alone or you'll let yourself in for further difficulties. Just clean them up well with a tap\wire brush and coat them liberally with antisieze prior to assembly. Replace the ones that came out of course...

ianc

[SP2]

I agree with ianc. If you try to remove the existing studs you might snap it in half and then you will have to drill out the remaining half with Christian's tool. I didn't get as lucky as you and only succcessfully removed 11/12 nuts from the studs. The one that snapped was my first one and it set me back a few months!

[Dixie]

Actually, since the heads will go to a machine shop, I thought I'd be bright and let them replace the studs.

[wilke3169]

Robert, Sounds like you are well on your way. I am signed up for March at CMP and have requested your assistance. Certainly looking forward to that. let me know if you need a hand before then.

[Dixie]

Thanks Kevin,

• First, I've been corresponding with the registrar. She should be pairing us up.
• Second, You'll like the changes at CMP. The new track layout is nice. But even better is the new NASAR-ish garage and paving in the paddock.
• Third, I only need help at my real work. It keeps gettin' in the way of my working on the engine.

[Dixie]

Between family and work, time for this project has been scarce. To rectify the situation, I took off from work today. The goal was to finish getting the heads off.

By 8:30am I had the valve covers off the engine.




By 4:00pm the engine looks like this. The heads are off and ready to go to the machine shop.




As you can tell, there’s quite a bit of carbon in the cylnders. Number 1 looks extra nasty…

[Dixie]

As the tear-down progressed, it became apparent which guides are leaking the worst. Each bank has one cylinder that stand s out for copious quantities of oil. For example, head #5 Nice and dry,




And here’s head #4. slick with oil.

[Dixie]

Now for a couple questions:
How does the chain look? Pretty good, or stretched to the limit?




How about the wear in these cam journals? Look acceptable? I can’t catch anything with my fingernails. (My theory is this. If the journals look good, then the bearings are good too.)

[TibetanT]

Rob:

Good information here!

One dumb question, since I am late to the party, how did you get the engine from the floor to the engine stand? What was the strategy there?

If one is working by himself, can you simply safely jack the engine up and put some blocks underneath then jack some more and blocks again?

Looks like that clutch did need to be replaced and JIT too!

Good luck with this one!

Cheers

[efhughes3]

Now there is an argument for regular use of Techron, and spirited driving to go with it. An engine should not have to collect carbon built up like that.

[wowzer911]

Rebuilding the top end in my spare motor soon, subscribed.

[Mitch Leland]

TibetanT,

I'll jump in here and tell you that the safest way is to use an engine hoist to get your engine from the floor to the engine stand. If you had some way of attaching a "come along" to the ceiling of your shop or garage that would also work. However "come alongs" can be tricky and they can get away from you when coming down...

I just saw an ad in the new Harbor Freight catalog for a scissor bench that lays flat and will elevate to work bench height. I think it was $299.