WonderBart

Tuesday – Ready old engine for extraction

First thing in the morning I dropped off the Flywheel for machining and headed to Princess Auto for some oil drain pans and some other items. To start the engine removal process I jacked up the car and put it on stands ready for drive shaft removal. Taking both the axle nuts off was actually pretty easy but when I got to the lower ball joints is when the trouble started. I worked on those for a couple of hours but had no success so I decided to do something different. I took the top of the suspension off including the struts and managed to get both the axles off. The drivers side CV boot was already cracked so grease was everywhere but I am glad it broke on my stock wheels and not my new mags. After that I drained the coolant from the engine and took the radiator out and started to work on the electrical plugs and hoses. I found out that to separate the main plugs on both the left and right side I had to take them off the mounting brackets. Toward the end of the night I managed to take of the gear shift linkage and unbolt the exhaust from the catalytic converter. As you can see from the pictures below the old engine was leaking major oil from everywhere so it was really greasy all over. Tommorrow the plan is to pull the engine out, clean the engine compartment, and mount the new clutch and tranny on the D16 engine.