Day Nine - New engine hoist exposes a snag

Knowing I was committed to pulling the engine, I went ahead and ordered an engine stand and hoist from Harbor Freight. I could have driven 15 miles to the closest one, but I decided to save the trip and order it online. With a flat $6.99 shipping charge, it was probably cheaper to do that. I got the 1/2 ton engine stand and 1 ton engine hoist. I wasn't looking to start a mechanic shop, so this seemed to suit my needs. 

The items arrived during the week and I didn't wait for the weekend to assemble them. The condition of the boxes were, suffice to say, laughable. Though, pissed was more my reaction. One of the boxes was completely broken open. Tape loosely flopping around. And they were just left on my driveway for everyone to see. You get what you pay for, I guess. With the condition of the packaging, I wanted to make sure they were fine, so I got to work putting them together. Fortunately, there were no missing parts and everything came together without a hitch and I was satisfied. 

That was, until I checked the reach. Okay, so I probably should have done a bit more research here. This arm is just not going to reach the center of the engine. After a slight bit of panic and mulling over the options, I decided I would remove the bumper, before packing everything up and exchanging the hoist for the 2 ton version. Ho boy! If the bumper removal worked, I'd keep moving forward with what I have. This was the task for this weekend.

Front end and bumper removed.

So, actually, the front end removal wasn't all that bad. I just need to find a place to hold all of these parts to keep them out of the way. My garage is already filled with other crap that all these parts lying on the floor just adds to the crampness. I'm keeping the front end out in the side yard for now along with some other parts. I think it should be safe out there.

Plastic, eh? Who knew?

Fog lights have been this way like forever.
Would be good to get replacement covers.

So the front end removal worked and I don't have to endure the hassle of exchanging this huge piece of equipment. Mission accomplished. Of course, if you're considering pulling your engine and haven't gotten the hoist yet, consider the 2 ton version or you'll also have to do this extra work.

One other note, I purchased the hoist using a coupon to get a discount. Harbor Freight does this a lot. I noticed that a later ad had a deeper discount coupon available. After reading the fine print on the coupon, I went to the local HF store and got the difference back! So, if you bought an item from HF, keep checking the ads for the next 30 days to see if you can get a deeper discount. Every dollar counts!

Sweet! It fits now!

Tie down hook.
Know what happens when you bang your
head twice within 10 minutes on these things?

This.

Day Eight - Center console and exhaust pipes

So looking over the engine removal instructions in the service manual, it says I need to remove the stick shift, et al. Seems like a reasonable starting point for the day. No real issues. The rubber boot on the shift lever looked torn up, so I think I'll need a new one. Other than that, I stopped short of pulling the shift lever because I still haven't drained the transmission yet, and didn't want to deal with any leakage. However, center console is out and access is clear.

Muffler gone, showing the locations of the 3 rubber hangers

Next on the list was removing the exhaust pipes. Instructions stated to start from the rear and move my way forward. Since I'm pulling the transmission as well, I'll need access to the drive shaft and removing the exhaust pipes will make access easier.

The biggest headache I had was the rubber hangers hold the exhaust pipes. I didn't appreciate the amount of twisting force I had to apply. I didn't want to tear them, but fortunately they are built to take it. The lack of room didn't help, but with a big screwdriver, I managed.

I'm sure they are easier to put *on*

Fortunately, I didn't strip out any of the nuts holding the pipes together. They were a little tough getting loose. Nothing a little weasel piss, a cheater bar and some brute force couldn't cure.

Day Seven - Reference shots and heater hoses

Not a whole lot done today. Just took more reference shots of wires and hoses. Trying to figure out what I need to disconnect and take enough pictures to refer back to when I put this thing back together.

Down the area behind the intake manifold.

Disconnected the heater hoses from the firewall. Had to be extra careful not to damage them after what I read about the difficulty in removing these.

The down pipe of the exhaust which is looming.

Wires behind the coil pack

Day Six - Just a few more parts

Not a whole lot done today since I didn't want my entire weekend devoted to working on the car. I did manage to pull off the pulleys on the water pump and the crankshaft. I was a little taken aback with what looked like an oil leak at the crankshaft seal. Hmmm, is this bad? It certainly is filthy with grime down there. What a mess!

Yuck! Although I'm pretty sure the engine is hosed, is this "normal"?

Day Five - On a roll

So dedicated the entire Saturday to dismantling parts to get the engine ready for pulling. I'm planning on pulling both the engine and the transmission, even though the transmission should be fine. I've heard that it's easier to get the transmission off when everything it outside of the car. Makes sense and since this is an education, might as well learn as much as I can.

Before doing any more part removal, I needed to take care of the fuel lines and relieving any pressure in the lines. I'm doing all this work in my garage that has a water heater in the corner and the thought of gasoline spilling everywhere made me nervous. I want to heed all the warnings I've read about this. So, I buttoned up some of the parts I took off and pulled the car out of the garage into the driveway. While it was outside, I took the opportunity to try and clean of some of the crud in the engine bay. Nothing too extensive.

With that done I had to pull the fuel pump relay, open the gas cap and crank the engine a few times until it stalled. I was also a bit apprehensive about this, because of the state of the engine with the knocking and all. Was I going to be doing even more damage? Well, it already doesn't work so onward. Curiously enough, I don't recall hearing any of the knocking. I gave it a few cranks until is stopped. Waited a few minutes. Did it again for good measure and called it done. I'll find out when I try to pull the fuel lines. Images of gas squirting all over the place went through my mind. As it turned out, I was worrying over nothing. After making a detour to the local Autozone to pick up a disconnect tool, the line came off easily and without any spillage. With no return line to have to deal with, I plugged up one of the ends with a rubber stopper and the other with a bolt.

Fuel line disconnected!

With my son's help, we pushed the car back into the garage so I could continue. And so began the labeling of the wiring harness. While I was at the store, I picked up some masking tape and started to label the connectors and taking more pictures. Note to self: Don't try to peel off masking tape with your latex gloves on. It's just an exercise in frustration.

The wiring harness pulled back out of the way.

Guess I didn't really *need* to disconnect this hose, but looks pretty gunky here.

Next on the list is pulling off the power steering pump and wiring it away. This is so I don't have to disconnect any of the power steering hoses which would be an unnecessary pain. The same will go for the air conditioning compressor when I get to that point. Don't want to make more work than is necessary. And I really don't need another possible failure point.

Next to go was the alternator. I replaced the alternator about a year ago, so I was a little familiar with it. One thing I remembered I had to do was remove the intake manifold bracket which is in the way of the attachment bolt. All of the cleaning I did earlier was for naught when dealing with the underside here. It was completely filled with grime and crud.

Crud down there easier to see sans alternator

After a little cleaning. Much better!

Next to come off was the exhaust manifold shroud. Bolts were pretty rusty from the looks of them. One of them felt stiffer as I loosened it. Crap! Twisted the head off. This will be fun getting out. Ugh!

Hmmm, time to use that screw extractor set I have

I wasn't quite sure what this black crud was. I think it was some chunks of silicone sealant mixed with some left over water when I rinsed off the engine earlier. Looked horrible when I removed the shield. Heh.

Day Four -- The radiator goes...snap!

Today I wanted to do something easy to help me see more of the engine compartment. I do a fair amount of just staring at the thing, studying all the parts and trying to get as familiar as I can with the engine and its parts. Pictures and diagrams are one thing, but actually seeing and touching the real components can't be beat. Unless, of course, you happen to break them in the process. More on that later. Removing the radiator seemed like an easy enough task to tackle with the last bits of the weekend remaining.

The first thing to do was to remove the splash guard below the engine compartment. It's not really needed to drain or remove the radiator, but it's going to go anyway and removing it now will just make the rest of the job easier. I've done this before when I made a repair to it some months ago. The plastic must have hit something and tore, leaving a section dangling. I fixed it my taping it together with some Gorilla Tape. It worked surprisingly well. It was still together!

Draining the coolant wasn't difficult. The hardest part was collecting the used one gallon milk jugs to store the  coolant (and other fluids) before taking them to the hazardous waste disposal site. :P Looking at the coolant drain made it look like my car was urinating. Heh. With the fluid drained, time to go after the hoses while the drainage tub was still underneath.

Hmmm, I think I'm going to need another one of those.

Well, it looked sturdy enough, but when I went to remove the top radiator hose I realized just how brittle the top had become. I never seemed to have any problems with the radiator save for some slight leakage near the radiator cap. Our mechanic said to just keep an eye on it. Obviously, having not touched the hoses until today, (ever?) I couldn't tell how precarious the whole thing was. It didn't take much force to break. Later I read that this is pretty common for Miata radiators and that some had failed earlier than this one. This is the same original radiator and it lasted 147K miles. OK, add this to the list of follow-up parts to get. I read that all aluminum radiators can be had. I'm going to look into that option when the time comes. First things first. Have to have a working engine before I shell out for other components.

Wow, I can see!

The rest of the job was pretty uneventful. I can see the new drive belts I replaced when I replaced the dead alternator. I'm done for the day and just pondering what to do next. I know I need to disconnect the fuel lines at some point and will need to relieve the fuel pressure in order to do so. Just a little concerned about doing it my garage with the water heater only a few feet away. Don't want to blow anything up. :)

It's new home. The fins look great though.

Day Three - Removing the valve cover

As I'm doing this autopsy of my dead Miata, I keep forgetting that I'm going to be replacing the whole engine. As I disassemble the thing (mostly for my own curiosity) I have to realize that I'm not going to fix what I'm discovering. At least, I don't think I am. What if I find that the engine isn't all that bad? One can hope.

So today I wanted to remove the valve cover. I've done this before on my old Toyota truck ages ago, so it's not all that difficult. I started by removing the spark plug wires from the coil pack. Disconnected the cam position sensor (Now that I know what that thing was!) and pulled out the PCV valve and started to remove the bolts.

There are 11 bolts that hold the valve cover to the head and a few of them were not tight at all. The wrench didn't have any resistance. I could have removed them by hand. The rest were okay. The other two bolts I needed to remove are the one attached to the coil pack in the back. The one on the passenger side is a bitch to get to. I removed the supports on a metal pipe along the top side that was in the way. I think it's a fuel line, but I don't know. I'll look it up when I get there. Anyway, I just loosened it enough to be able to get to the bolt.

While moving some of the wiring harness around in the back, I noticed that some of them used to be tied back, but many of the plastic tie downs were broken so they were loosely hanging there. Doesn't seem to be much of a problem as the entire wire harness is pretty tight together.

I pulled off the valve cover and everything looks fairly normal as far as I can tell. I don't know the last time I ever replaced the valve over gasket. (Maybe never?) It didn't look too bad until I started messing with it and it started to break apart from brittleness. Well, if this ever makes it back to regular duty, a new gasket is in the cards.

I did find another problem when I pulled off the cover. The cam position sensor looked kind of exposed. Upon closer inspection I can see that part of it was broken off. Looking into the timing belt area, I saw the other half leaning against the timing belt. It must have just come off then. I can't imagine it still being where it was if the engine was running. Ugh! Oh! Remember, I'm replacing the engine. Hmmm, this may be one of those parts that isn't included. OK, possible new sensor to buy as well.

Inspecting the valves, I'm not totally sure what I'm looking for, but it doesn't seem too bad. There's a little bit of gunk around. I was sort of expecting all kinds of metal shavings or something, but I don't really see any of that here. I did notice that the spark plug hole, that had the massive amount of oil covering it, has the oil coming from deeper than the valve cover. I'm thinking the head gasket was the problem here.

Hmm, so is this a normal amount of gunk, or is it something I should worry about if I'm going to keep this head?

A look down the gnarly spark plug shaft.

Well, I think that's it for today. What I'm looking at tackling next would be to drain and remove the radiator and maybe remove the intake manifold.