Day Sixteen - Pulling off the head

Cleaning the oil pan

Wasn't sure how I was going to tackle removing the pistons yet, so I decided to start with a cleanup job first. The oil pan was filthy and I wanted to clean out any residual particles that may have fallen into it. I noticed what I thought were shavings from the destroyed bearings, so I had to make sure none of that was lingering. Using a bunch of engine degreaser, a bunch of old towels and some elbow grease, I think I got it looking pretty good.

Removing the head

So I had to eventually bite the bullet and get to it. I marked each of the 10 head bolts and removed them in sequence. I was trying to be careful with every little thing. I got a chance to see what a 147K+ mile engine looked like. I didn't really know what to expect. To my untrained eye, it was interesting to see all of the carbon buildup. I suppose it makes sense though. I took a lot of reference pictures, figuring I might need to show them to others for advice. 

I was particularly interested in seeing how the cylinders made out. Again, without any experience I was just making guesses. They seemed to look alright and I didn't see any scoring that I was afraid would have come from the destroyed bearing. I took reference pictures of the valves. You know, just take pictures of everything I thought.

Removing the pistons

Next came time to remove the pistons. One by one I unbolted the rod caps and slid the pistons out, making sure I labeled which one was which. I wasn't sure what I was going to do yet, so labeling them still seemed the most prudent thing to do. With all the pistons out, I got a good look at the crankshaft rod journals and they didn't look so good. Especially the one with the spun bearing. 

I boxed and labeled the pistons. Not sure if I was going to use them again. From what I read, it looks like I would go the over-sized route, which meant buying new pistons so the cylinders could get bored out. Of course, this required some consultation on the part of others who have more experience with this than me.

 I was done for the weekend. Off to do more research on what I'm getting myself into. Heh.

Day Fifteen - Timing belt removal

Finishing the timing belt removal -- finally!

I let pulley boss soak in penetrating oil overnight - read that it should just pull off.
Walked it off and that was that. I decided to give it a rest. I'll do more next weekend.

Gah! What a mess!

Sans timing belt

Day Fourteen - Avoiding the lull

After removing the oil pan and getting confirmation of the spun bearing, there was a bit of a "now what?" pause. Where do I go from here? So I don't lose momentum I start dis-assembly. I think somewhat because my curiosity likes to take things apart, but mainly to find the extent of any damage. That means pulling the head and checking the cylinders. I envisioned deep gouges along the cylinder walls and stuff. Time to start tearing this thing down and seeing what I got.

Re-seating on the engine stand

The original setup I had for the engine on the stand had the mounting bracket on an angle. I wanted it to be aligned when I set the locking pin. Back onto the crane so I could futz around with the mounting arms configuration. Below is what I settled on.

One thing to note is that the Harbor Freight engine stand and crane don't seem to play well with each other. The bottom legs of the crane aren't spaced far enough apart for the engine stand base to get close enough. It was always a pain in the ass when trying to transfer from the crane to the stand and vice versa. It would probably work if the crane was on a higher level than the stand, but I'm sure most people have, like, floors.

Intake manifold removal

Next task was to remove the intake manifold. I ended up taking off the fuel injector rail as well. It'll eventually need a good cleaning from the looks of it.

So how am I going to get that fuel rail out?

Yuck!

Setting this aside to clean later

Fuel Injectors

Timing belt removal

Removing the timing belt covers exposed a bit more gunk, but the belt itself looked in pretty good shape. The crud around the lower half of the block was caked on pretty good. More cleaning in my future!

This being my first time doing something like this, I'm preceding cautiously and getting acquainted with all the parts and where they should go. Taking lots of pictures along the way.

Looks like I'm going to have to replace the thermostat. I've never gotten it replaced so now is as good a time as any.

Day Thirteen - As I expected. Problem confirmed

Getting to the bottom of this. No pun intended. Bullshit, pun intended.

Prologue: So I'm realizing that I'm a crappy blogger. This blog fell off the wayside while I was working on the car. (I'm more of a doer than a reporter, I guess.) Anyways, as of today, the rebuild is done. (I'll keep you all in suspense on whether it was a success or failure.) I'm coming back to this because I do want to chronicle the process. I learned a lot! It'll just have to be in retrospect rather than as it happened. I have a large repository of photos that I did take along the way, so hopefully that will jog my memory. Okay, so where was I...

Mounting on the engine stand

Removing the A/C bracket

Coolant pipes off

I had trouble finding bolts that would fit the holes on the transmission side of the engine. Hardware stores do *not* have metric bolts with M12 x 1.5mm thread size. They had 1.25mm & 1.75mm, but *not* 1.5mm! Frustrating!  Had to special order them.

Later I found that it was possible to mount on the side and got some clarity from this thread http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?p=2155238#post2154806 that I googled.
I had to get different bolts for this method so back to the hardware store again! But this time, they had the right thread pitch, just not the right length. Too long! Awesome. However, with a little on the spot ingenuity in the hardware store, I fixed that little problem by buying some bushings and washers. It took a little finagling with the mounting arms, but managed to get three of them secured. I was a little uncertain just using three mounting arms, but figured the engine is relatively light, so I should be okay. With the engine mounted, I could rotate it and get to the oil pan.

Removing the oil pan

This ended up being a little harder than I thought. I couldn't just pull it off. It was snagging on something on the inside and I couldn't see what it was. It ended up being the baffle, but not knowing a whole lot of what to expect it just seemed stubborn. There was sealant stuck on the cover, so I tried to just pry it up. I bent one part of the baffle a little bit. Hopefully, it wasn't too bad. It wasn't pretty, but I got it off finally.

The first thing I did was look for metal shards. I found a few, I think, and was hoping it wasn't too drastic.

Inspecting the spun bearing

I inspected the rod caps and felt tightness of the rods and it was obvious which one was the problem.

The #4 rod was rattling loose. All of the other ones were tight.

I removed the #4 rod cap and wondered where the bearing was. I was pretty sure there are supposed to be two of these things. To my untrained eye, the single damaged bearing looked ugly, but *how* damaged it was, wasn't apparent to me until I took off one of the normal bearings.

The #4 bearings had actually stacked onto each other and apparently fused together and got deformed from the friction heat. The pictures pretty much tell the story.

Both damaged bearings fused together.

Bearings split apart. 

Journal looks like hell.

Day Twelve - Extraction Day

So this was the big day for me. I have never done this before. Pulling an engine seemed like a huge deal, though reading about it and watching YouTube videos of the process certainly allayed my fears. I was pretty confident I could do this. I wrote down the last few steps and got started. It was coming out today.

First thing on my list was disconnecting the clutch line from the slave cylinder. I thought I was going to get clutch fluid everywhere when I loosened the connection, so I wrapped some rags around it. The mess never materialized. I assume I'll have to bleed the clutch lines when I re-assemble anyway. Might as well replace the fluid while I'm at it. Okay, getting ahead of myself here.

Next on the list was removing the shift lever. The rubber boot was pretty torn up so I just pulled it off completely. Figure I'll replace that, too. (I keep intending to write a list of these replacement parts, but keep putting it off. Fortunately, writing this blog will help pull that information together.) With the shift lever out, I taped up the opening so crud wouldn't get in the hole. Oh, btw, I forgot to mention that I drained the transmission fluid the day before, so I knew I wasn't going to have that big of a mess when I pulled the propeller shaft. Which was the next thing.

I marked the propeller shaft where it connected to the differential so I could re-install it back the same way. Using my new impact wrench made this much easier. It slipped off without any problems and I covered the open end of the transmission with a baggy, just in case. While I was down there, I loosened the power plant frame (PPF) bolts so I can get ready to detach it when I got the engine chained up and supported. I noticed that the wiring harness along the transmission was getting in the way, so I just detached it from the PPF. There are clips and I just used some pliers to ease them out. Last thing to do at this point, while I was under the car, was to remove the cross member. Four bolts and it was out.

AC compressor moved aside

Back in the engine bay, the last thing left was to move the AC compressor out of the way. I had a few wire hangers that I re-bent and wired it out of the way. At this point, I have everything disconnected and/or out of the way so I'm ready to chain up the engine to the crane. Since I knew I was pulling the transmission along with the engine, I bought a leveler to help ease out the monstrosity. Once I got the engine chained up and supported by the hoist, I could release the transmission from the PPF. I unbolted the PPF and just pushed it aside rather than remove it completely. I actually rested the dangling PPF on a box, just to support its weight. Next, I loosened the engine mounts and started to raise the engine a bit. I don't remember if I had to or not, but I went ahead and removed the engine mounts, now that the hoist had the weight of the engine. Gave it a few shoves and it was pretty much free floating now.

On its way!

I spent some time finagling the angle of the engine with the load leveler. When it got to the point where it got a bit too much to handle myself, I had my son man the jack while I guided the engine through. By myself, it was a pain going back and forth trying to guide the engine while simultaneously jacking it up. With his help, it only took about 5 minutes and it was free.

That little post saved its ass from my clumsiness

Only ran into one snag where the coil pack was rubbing too much against the firewall. Good thing it had a little post to keep it from getting crushed. Some engineer was looking out for me.

Can't say the same for the firewall seam. Minor.

Ok, out! Now what?

Can't believe I actually got this thing out.  :)

Now I want to get this thing onto my engine stand.

Dirty transmission.

So this thingy needed to come off. My new impact wrench made short work of the bolts holding it on. It's pretty filthy on the outside. Can't say any different on the inside. Glad I don't have to take this thing apart. Just going to store it off to the side until I need it again.

Hmm, so that's what that looks like.

Since I was planning on mounting the engine from the back end here, I needed to remove the flywheel, et al. I also figured that, since I've gone this far into it, I might as well see the state of the clutch disc. This is the kind of stuff I would usually leave to the mechanic to do, but I might as well start learning how to do this myself. Knowledge is power.

Flywheel

Clutch disc. Looks pretty worn.

I take it the grooves on the clutch disc are an indicator of how worn it is. So, if I read this right, I'm well due. This one has the full 147K miles of wear as I've never touched this since I've owned the car.

I hit a snag in my plan to mount the engine on the stand. There were a couple of holes on the bell housing that had some sort of guide bushings that I couldn't remove. I didn't think I could just mount it on these bushings. It didn't seem sturdy enough. I tried mounting it on the other available holes, but two of them had to be on the oil pan. How the heck would I ever get the oil pan off and still have it on the stand? For the time being I left it this way, but I would have to figure out a different way. Unfortunately, the bell housing bolts I was going to use were too short, so I had to find some longer ones at the hardware store. So, no mounting today. I just left it sitting on some wood 4x4s and kept it chained on the hoist. Time to do some more research though.

In the meantime, with better access I removed the exhaust manifold and realized I missed a fastener when I tried to remove it earlier. No wonder the thing wouldn't come off. Doh! With the header off, I noticed a deposit of what looked like grease or something. How'd that get there? Seemed weird. Anyway, I'm done for the day. Big accomplishment for me though.