Another Saturday another plow thru the list of things that need to be done and finished up underneath the Box. With the IMS bearing installed it's time to modify the oil pump to feed it fresh oil instead of letting it turn to some kind of primordial soup over tim. At the same time, the front engine mont was rockin and rolling and I had a new bushing to install.
The red arrow is the oil pump buried behind the motor mount, which is the blue arrow.
The 4 body nuts are easy to get to but the 2 top bolts (green head) to the engine are not. The trick is to let the engine hang as low as possible after the body fasteners are off. Like hang on the hoses and the jack not touching the engine. To give you MAX wiggle room to pull it out, you should also make sure that there is NO pressure in the cooling system by opening the coolant cap in the trunk and letting it sit loosely. This will allow you max squeeze on the hoses to allow the mount to slide out. It came out pretty easily towards the passenger side. On a scale of 10-10 on the swear jar scale, I put only a couple of quarters in and didn't you any of the more exotic words I know.
Once the mount was out, I can see that it is destroyed. The inner part is not even connected to the rubber. I guess 122K is just too much!!!
This shows the new bushing vs. what's left of the old one. Out with the old and in with the new.
This part didn't fit into my crappy little press, so Brute Force and Ignorance to the rescue! With no way to press it out/in, the only option is to make a slice into the outer steel ring and collapse this ring to enable it to be knocked out. A few minutes with a hack saw and then a chisel and punch and the old part was out. The new part had to be pressed in and I did that with a driver and 3lb hammer. Once side of the mount has a nice bevel made into the opening to allow an easy start of the new bush. A bit of white lube on the leading edge and then some judicious pounding and the new bush was in. It must be oriented properly as well.
A little clean up and bolting the 2 parts together and she ready to go back in. But not yet!
Time for some open heart surgery. The EPS bearing needs the oil pump modded to feed fresh oil to the bearing. The oil pump is behind the motor mount and has about 10 10mm bolts holding it to the front of the engine. It has an o-ring making the seal, not a gasket so it's not going to be hard to take off. It also has dowel pins locating it accurately and a lug to pry on to get it off without breaking the cover.
The prying lug is up near the bolt sticking thru and the oil pressure spring is under the hex head plug on the left side of the pic. A few taps on the hex and a long pry driver to get the top moving and it came right off. The oil pump drive hex is sticking out on the right side. Mark the gears so they go back in the same place and inspect them for wear. These look just fine and a quick clean up and they are ready to go back in.
This is the pump drive hole that the hex fits into and needs to have a hole punched into plug deep in there. EPS supplies the nicely sharpened punch in the kit and all it took was a few strong taps to break thru and get the 3mm hole required. It was stuck in there like a nail into wood, so it took a few side taps to get it loose and pull it out. Because I have a "show me" streak, I grabbed a piece of wire to probe the hole and just see how far it can go in.
I stuck this in and it goes in quite a ways and came out with the skanky smelling oil on it that I found when I pulled the IMS bearing out. So, I'm now happy with the design thinking that went into this.
Change out the hex drive for the oil pump that has the special groove cut into it and remount the pump cover and gears. I filled the cover and gears with oil to make sure it was lubed on startup.
The oil pump is a finely made and finished part and uses no gaskets or seals in it's operation. The shafts and gears use the oil and the close tolerances to make a seal so that is doesn't bypass more then a certain amount. This is what the hex drive needs to have the groove cut into it. Even with the 3mm hole in the back of the pump, oil would not really run in there by traveling down the original hex drive. This slot must meter/bleed a certain amount oil thru to the back side and into the IMS to then feed the bearing.
All buttoned up and ready to run!!
