Engine Removal, Rebuild, and Re-installaion

[RawleyD]

Wow, badass.. you have a lot of guts. Great thread!

[pjq]

Wow, brings back memories,.... neat car eh!
You were lucky to find a used IMS in good shape. If you put the vent holes in did you also pin the gears to the shaft?
I see your old IMS on the lower shelf, can it be salvaged? I was lucky, LN was able to salvage mine.

Is that the original IMS to Crank chain tensioner? Did any of your chain guides or tensioners fail?

The first Pic is a keeper. Maybe the Admin. would consider it as the opening Pic for this DIY Project guide! Its great.

[Jamesp]

This is a 3 chain engine which may be why the chains look HD, the IMS to crank was redesigned to a gear type chain instead of sprocket type in the 3 chain engines. Finding an IMS took forever, and then 2 in one week on Ebay. I've seen several others since, but none with a gear drive. I considered pinning the shaft, but weighing the risk benefit (loose pins in the engine) and my novice status as a machinist, I'm staying away from that. The old IMS shaft took it on the chin and now has 0.015 wobble in the gear. It's dead. Maybe I can stand it up with a base under it and make it into a trophy. That is the original tensioner arm. The IMS gave up the ghost at idle there was only one chip out of the plastic on a tensioner that looked related to the failure. There were metal chips embedded in all the tensioners. They will all be replaced. And I'd be honored to have admin use that first pic as an intro!

[Jamesp]

More parts have come in so there is progress. The block half was tilted down and cleaned with brake cleaner. It didn't need much




The bearing carrier was installed in the block half



and pistons were installed

[Jamesp]

I was asked to bump this thread and report out how it turned out. 14,700 miles later this is still my daily driver and it just doesn't get old. Top down, wailing flat 6 every day, very nice. I hit redline at least 4 times today - I need to pick that up a little. I have to say that the forum was super supportive during the rebuild. It would not have come out nearly as nice without everyone pitching in, with a special thanks to Jake Raby and the other professionals on the forum for giving their encouragement, knowledge and advice. I planned to take the IMS bearing out at 15, 000 miles to inspect it just to see if my modified IMS shaft worked then replace it with new bearing for grins, but now I'm thinking more like 20,000 miles... Thanks to all.

[Disaster]

Originally Posted by Jamesp

I was asked to bump this thread and report out how it turned out. 14,700 miles later this is still my daily driver and it just doesn't get old. Top down, wailing flat 6 every day, very nice. I hit redline at least 4 times today - I need to pick that up a little. I have to say that the forum was super supportive during the rebuild. It would not have come out nearly as nice without everyone pitching in, with a special thanks to Jake Raby and the other professionals on the forum for giving their encouragement, knowledge and advice. I planned to take the IMS bearing out at 15, 000 miles to inspect it just to see if my modified IMS shaft worked then replace it with new bearing for grins, but now I'm thinking more like 20,000 miles... Thanks to all.

Awesome. I did a rebuild to a Fiat 124 spider years ago and it was a similar "get your feet wet" learning experience. The original engine in that car had a connecting rod failure that went through the side of the block at about 105k miles. I beat the snot out of that car...driving 90mph on the freeway on a long drive to work. Replaced it with an engine from a coupe that had a low 60k miles which I tore down. The valves were coated with a this layer of "coke." I used a wire wheel to remove the carbon build up and replaced the valve seals.

So the original owner got 120K out of the car before the bearing failed? Do you know what oil the original owner used? Do you know his oil change interval...ie. 5k, 10k?

[Lapister]

James, Quite a project to take on, glad everything worked out. Could you possibly explain in short what it takes to actually get engine out? Mainly, how high the car has to be for it to drop down.

[Jamesp]

Originally Posted by Lapister

James, Quite a project to take on, glad everything worked out. Could you possibly explain in short what it takes to actually get engine out? Mainly, how high the car has to be for it to drop down.

I found higher is better. It really depends on the jack used to lower the engine. I took out the rear crossmember after carefully marking its installed position with spray paint for reassembly. I then took out the entire drive train. There are many connections between the engine and the car. I suggest using the 101 projects book as a guide.