Engine drop . . . day one
 

Well day one of the LeSchander engine drop went better than expected thanks to the help of the absentee members of this board, and at least 10 fellow Pelican heads, and PCA chapter members.
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Everyone shows up early . . . ready to go.

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10:00 a.m Omminous begining . . .Richard brought more beer than water.

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10:45 a.m. What do we do next . . . thanks Wayne!

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Now this does'nt look anything like Wayne's pictures:eek:

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4:30 p.m (after pizza & a beer) Its outtta there.

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5:00 p.m. Now I know why Richard brought so much beer!

It was a great time, with great people.

Excellent! Glad to be of help! Best $30 you could spend on your 911, huh?

-Wayne

Hey, great pics. That jack you used for dropping the motor was in a Sear's advertisement I got today, and I was wondering if it would work well.

Bill:

The jack worked perfectly with the pallet that I cut down to fit between the control arms. Had to notch the middle wrung of the pallet to sit down on the jack.

We dropped the engine and trans together so the trans mount had to be supported by a 4 x 4 as we dropped the engine.

It was a snap, and the jack was even easy to assemble !!

Cheers

From the picture in the ad, it looked like it would work well... both as a jack and an engine dolly. It didn't have any specs as to how high it would reach, or how low it sat. I was planning on visiting Sears to take a closer look. For under a $100, it's worth looking into.

As an attendee and participant I can attest that the engine was out of the car by 4:00 on Saturday so having started at about 9:30 and allowing for an hour Friday night for the oil drain and prep work total time was under 8 hours.

About the only thing I remember not being in either the Bentley or Wayne's book was that we actually had to disconnect the accelerator linkage going from the side of the tranny to the top of the engine b/c as we lowered the engine that linkage was getting hung up on the end of the left rear CV shaft. Otherwise the step-by-step instructions were right on the money!

BTW I'm sure Richard is still smiling that his hard oil line was a piece of cake to disconnect and came off in less than 2 minutes.

As Marc said, it was a great day and a great time with other P-Car friends. Hopefully we'll have as much help next weekend putting it back together.

Bill,
It looks like the jack sold for working on m/c's. Sold at Sears, Costco, Harbor Freight, Pep-Boys, and probably even 7-11.
I have one, and though I have not used it for a 911 engine yet, I'm sure many have and liked it.

BTW, inspect the one you buy carefully before putting a load on it.
Mine (from Costco) had several assembly errors that may have caused an accident. I believe most of these jacks are made in China, so you get what you pay for.

Don't forget to suspend those axle shafts with some wire. I let mine hang overnight and it cost me. Pass. side boot @ wheel side tore open. Ended up replacing all four boots, relubing and swapping inner CV's to opposite sides. Messy job that you don't want to do if you really don't have to do it, or don't have the time to do it. Had to buy the 3/4 in. drive breaker bar too, so I could get the darn axle shaft nuts off!!!! Well, didn't have to buy it, but I knew it'd come in handy again sometime...........

Picked up one of those Craftsman jacks as well...primarily to do my eventual engine drop. I like the down pedal that releases pressure in small increments. Glad to see it can get the job done.

Hope this thread is "...to be continued" with a follow up engine install. Seems it would be a bit more tricky than removal, huh?

I can't post too much right now, but will when I get to the office Monday (hard day surfing at work).

Engine drop was an absolute cinch and I slept all the better with one of the most satisfying feelings I've had in a while. It was a great day, lots of great people showed up and I was ecstatic when we were done. Marcesq is a very generous fellow for letting me take over his garage for two weekends. And his wife is pretty understanding too.

KTL, we did tie those CV's up with a coat hanger. Bolts came out with no problem at all. Hard oil line was so easy, we didn't even need a breaker bar. This was a very doable project.

I'll post more on the clutch and tranny work tomorrow.

"The jack worked perfectly with the pallet that I cut down to fit between the control arms. Had to notch the middle wrung of the pallet to sit down on the jack. We dropped the engine and trans together so the trans mount had to be supported by a 4 x 4 as we dropped the engine"

You've obviously generated a bit of excitement with the first documented use of the new Craftsman jack. Any pics of your modified pallet and 4x4 support system without the engine and tranny on top? I suspect many (myself included) would like to "leverage your existing technology" - with due credit given, of course. Perhaps a suitable royalty fee can be arranged?

:D

JC:

Pictures of the pallet as well as the dimensions will be posted after the engine is re-installed on Saturday.

Always glad to help, royalty would be showing us all your experiance!!

Cheers.

Janus - I told Marc we should have painted the damn thing b/c once everyone saw it they'd want one too!

Looks like you guys had a hoot..........my kind of party. Wrenchs, grease, P-Cars & GOOD BEER ..........:p :p :p

Now I'm back at the job I have to support my Porsche habit.

Day 2 made up for the ease of day 1. Since I want to adjust the valves while the engine is out, we had to remove the cat for access to the left lower valves. That was a very frustrating experience. Those bolts were all crusted together, though I think we got 6 of them off with wrenches. Then came the last 3, which required a Dremel, hammer/chisel, a lot of four-letter words and several hours. But now the cat is off, valve covers are too, will be cleaned, painted red and I'll adjust the valves tomorrow night.

Separating the tranny and engine was easy. Out popped the clutch, which was the original rubber-centered one and it had plenty of surface life left in it. TO Bearing and PP looked fine too (car is at 82,756 miles). HOWEVER, the infamous G50 fork/shaft wear was very apparent. The needle bearings had really scored the ends of the shaft. It was difficult to operate by hand, so I can imagine that such resistence contributed to my worn slave cylinder a few months ago. Luckily, John Walker sent me the updated fork kit from Weltmeister and it will make such a difference. That shaft spins quite freely and I can't wait to experience the buttery new feeling in the pedal. So I removed the old flywheel seal, which was not real easy and installed the new one, which was not too tough. We assembled the new TO bearing, installed into PP and I dropped the flywheel off for inspection/resurfacing/replacement. I need to get that old guide tube outta there, replace a few more seals on top of the engine and we'll be having an engine re-install party same time, same place next Saturday.

I still have that warm, fuzzy feeling inside from doing this project. Very satisfying.

That's Doug and I in the first picture checking out a beautifully-restored 914 with the owner, one of the few with a 6 in it. Sorry, I met a lot of new people and can't remember the owner's name. Had a great time and learned a lot. Back to the 914, the owner had recently repainted his wheels. When he started to sand the center caps for repainting, he noticed that the way the deeper parts of the crest and the circle retained the black paint looked very cool against the higher polished surface, so he did them all that way instead of repainting them. I'm going to do mine the same way. After I do it, I'll post a picture so you can see what I'm talking about.

Hey Dan,

Thanks for the compliments on my car. There are some pics of the car with the refinished rims in my Pelican Gallery, if you click on my signature below.

Richard, how did you guys manage to get the final engine bolt out? It couldn't have been too hard since I left at 3:30, and the engine was out by 4:00. What did the engine mount bar look like once the engine was out? Is it re-usable?

Thanks again to everyone for a great day!

Justin

We did destroy the engine support while taking that seized bolt outta there. The ends were completely mangled. But I just rounded up a used one and new bolts, Fed Ex'd to me for $50. So I can live with that. I'm a little bummed, though, that the wrench said my flywheel is shot. I thought it looked pretty good. But I don't want any clutch chatter or to have to this job again for a while. So a new flywheel it is. It was great meeting everyone. We could use a little help next Sat., though it should not take as long.

Forgive my ignorance, but why does the VA license plate have the SR-71 Blackbird on it? Lockheed headquarters in VA? Just curious. Wish I had something like that. I guess Lincoln's bust (head) ain't all bad. Though not as cool as a one of the baddest jets of all time.

It's a specialty plate for the National Air and Space Museum. VA has a ton of specialty plates available:
VA plate selector

Justin