my DIY engine rebuild

[BYprodriver]

Originally Posted by flaps10

It has taken me a few days of pacing about, soul searching and even laying awake at night trying to plan my next move. I really wanted to believe that I had dodged the big one and that I might be able to install a new IMS and do some oil changes.

I also wanted to believe that Santa was real. I had a number of "what if's" going on in my head.



I miss driving the car but I can't allow that to cloud my judgement and then end up with a smoking boat anchor.

When I shared my thoughts with my woman she said "You should tear it apart. You know how, you enjoy working on it and you bought the car as a hobby".

I had also recently queried Mr Raby to see if he had plans to do a plain bearing for those of us who own two row cars. He sent a quick reply telling me that the market isn't large enough to justify it, and also to please not install any LN products in my engine. That was a pretty direct statement. I'm guessing he doesn't carefully peel bandaids off either.

Damn that Santa Claus anyway.

So I'm going to proceed with the complete tear down. I will hold every part of this engine in my hands before long. I will get down to a bare crankshaft which I will need to have polished and checked for straightness. Jake also urged me to have everything cleaned ultrasonically to make sure every bit of debris is out.

That decision made, Chapter 2 begins this week with removal of the engine and the beginning of the tear down.

While the IMS is out you can send it to LN for their Triple bearing upgrade.

Early bicycle chain style IMS w/ triple ceramic bearings & pinning inc. core charge. LN Engineering

[flaps10]

Why have I not seen that before? I'd only glanced at the IMS assemblies on the LN page without taking the time to understand what the offering is.

Is it just my browser or is the LN page devoid of much in the way of product descriptions? More importantly, is this shaft drop in compatible with my two row engine, or do I need different chains, cam sprockets, etc?

I grasp welding or pinning the gear to the shaft of course. This assembly appears to have that operation taken care of and includes a triple row bearing I can't even buy separately.

I might have to knock off a few more convenience stores.

[Jamesp]

When you tear the engine down you should check your oil pump housing. The metal chips in your filter passed though your oil pump on the way to the filter and may have opened up the clearances. Ultrasonic cleaning is the way to go. I rebuilt an engine with a failed IMS bearing (single row) and spent a lot of time cleaning with solvents and still found some chips in the pan after the rebuild. I went back with a sealed greased steel bearing (partially due to bearing contamination concerns) and modified my IMS to keep the grease in the bearing. I've put about 2000 miles on the rebuild, with plenty of redline, heck, almost always redline, and the bearing has held so far. The bearing will be pulled after 15k miles, and if the engine has no sign of metal in the oil an open bearing will be a possible replacement. If there is any metal in the oil it's likely to tear up an open oiled bearing. I looked at using a roller bearing but was concerned about shaft alignment with the rollers after reading bearing manufacturers data. Roller bearings require close alignment, something the designers of the M96 were not designing to as they used a deep groove ball bearing which is relatively insensitive to shaft alignment. I posted my rebuild on this forum, though not as good a job as you are doing.

[BYprodriver]

Originally Posted by flaps10

Why have I not seen that before? I'd only glanced at the IMS assemblies on the LN page without taking the time to understand what the offering is.

Is it just my browser or is the LN page devoid of much in the way of product descriptions? More importantly, is this shaft drop in compatible with my two row engine, or do I need different chains, cam sprockets, etc?

I grasp welding or pinning the gear to the shaft of course. This assembly appears to have that operation taken care of and includes a triple row bearing I can't even buy separately.

I might have to knock off a few more convenience stores.

I guess LN has removed thier original website to minimize competitors using the info there. I believe the triple row upgrade was the 1st IMSB service/upgrade available & has always require installation @ LN. Just send your IMS to LN & allow about a month for shipping & upgrade service. I do this for all the engines I build & consider it a once & done for life operation.

[flaps10]

Got it out this weekend.

Getting organized. To minimize the amount of greasy hand prints on my books, to eliminate steps already performed by removing engine, and to take care of model specific things (e.g. my car doesn't have a throttle cable) I made a check list. On it I documented the page of the Bentley manual and/or Wayne's book which had the best description and pictures.

Another, while in work. Oh, and there are four hoses not three...


Trunk shot. This is one of those steps that when I read it, it wasn't clear. I mean, if I'm going to remove a bunch of connections on the engine, wouldn't I just leave this part of the harness hooked up? Well, no as it turns out. There are a ton of sensors still plugged in when you drop the engine and the least amount of them to pull are when you disconnect the harness in the trunk.


Regarding the steps in the book I'd like to expand on one or two. For example when you split the power steering pressure line it tells you to be prepared to catch some fluid. We're not talking "have a rag handy" fluid. I guessed this was going to happen and had a mostly empty container of discarded brake fluid handy to catch this stream which lasted several minutes.

Another point or two.

When it has you disconnect the big electrical cable at the top front of the compartment, do not assume that just because the cable is black and that the housing is black that it is a ground cable and therefore inert. It's not. Disconnect your battery ground in the frunk before doing that step.

Speaking of the cable junction. The steps have you remove the three A/C compressor bolts, but the top one is sort of blocked off by the power steering reservoir. Since it has to come off anyway it makes sense to remove it first. But. Reaching the twist ring at the base is easier if the ground cable is out of the way. Not just the ground cable but the junction it is mounted to. So it's: cable, reservoir, A/C bolts.

The A/C removal was cake by the way. All three easily reachable from the top with a long extension.


Okay, goofy MacGiver trick. When you pull the fuel line connections the books also mention to be prepared for some gas, so I had an old lawn mower jug available. Gas continued to drip from the hard line (mounted to the car) and wasn't that good about dripping precisely into my container. So I put a small zip tie around the end which would serve as the low point and path of least resistance. At first I just pointed it down into the gas can but then decided that if I rotated it at an angle I could see at a glance when it was done dripping.
After an hour I got annoyed and created a plug out a piece of fuel line and a bolt.

Front mount disconnected and I was out of excuses. Time to get my #3 son to help me lower it down. I didn't know how smoothly it would go so I ran him through the various jobs I might be yelling at him to do on short notice. Like the A/C compressor, or going back up a 1/2" in case anything was hung up.

I had done a pretty careful job of tending to the various hoses and connections that might get hung up. An obvious one is the power steering return line, which looked like it would just love to get hung up on the left suspension. So I zip tied it to the pressure line, tucking it nicely out of the way.

After lowering the engine about 5" I was able to rearrange the various items that had been intertwined and push the main harness in and get it situated. Likewise the A/C compressor was moved to behind the driver's seat at about this point.

Then it was on down, eventually working it off the jack and onto a long piece of wood that will allow me to slide it like a pizza.




Done. On the ground and bleeding its last. I had to quit for the day and didn't check how much clearance I needed to create before twisting the engine 90 degrees and sliding it out the back. Quite sure it's too tall, just not sure how much.

[flaps10]

Last night I was able to get the engine rotated 90 degrees on my pizza board and turned sideways inside the engine compartment. That has to be done to slide it out the back of the car. There is really no room to spare while rotating it and it takes as much care as when you lower the engine to not have anything hang up on something. Just take your time and you'll see what needs to be adjusted.

When I finally got the board to slide to the very back of the car I was about 3" too short. I read up on removing the bumper and decided on just jacking the car up higher. I gave up for the night and decided to just get on it today.

Today I was able to get home from work a little early and get on it. Jacking up the car in stages I got it just high enough to clear and slide the engine out where I could begin working on it.



It's actually a pretty sizable chunk of machinery.

The intake manifold comes off in a fairly large unit, and with it comes the wiring harness, plug wires, fuel rails and fuel injectors, and some random bits. After examining it for a few minutes I could see the places where it all had to come apart and it looked pretty easy.
I started by grabbing a roll of blue tape and a sharpie pen and labeling all the wire connections. Truth be told most of them are one of a kind in their given neighborhoods so there aren't a lot of places to screw up. However it is good to take the time to grasp every connector and figure out what it does. It will certainly help on assembly and if nothing else I now know for certain where every one of them is in case one goes TU.
The knock sensors are a little hard to reach until the manifold is pulled part way off. You also need to tend to a crankcase hose, alternator connections, a vacuum line and the plastic tube for the AOS. I took several pictures to help un furball things later.

Then off it came.






Next up will be removing the starter, alternator, power steering pump, oil cooler, oil filler tube, EGR and it should start looking like a big metal suitcase.

Then it will be time to get oily.