Driving home, Smurfette loses power in a serious way about two blocks away. Then she stalls while backing into a parking spot. Then she won't start. Then she appears to have 4 liters of coolant sitting in her oil pan... Sounds like a blown head gasket, according to the books. I *hope* it's a blown head gasket, rather than a cracked head or cylinder, which are the other options...
She fits in the garage, for small values of "fits"... Thanks to Glenn, Natalie and Jane for helping with the pushing her around the block part...
Yup, she has an engine up here...
Hmmm. I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be a disconnectable connector to the fuel injector, rather than wires twisted together, soldered, and covered in heat-shrink and electrical tape. The DPO strikes again! I'll have to snip these to be able to move the throttle body out of the way; hopefully I can find a proper connector to put back on...
Well, that's the air intake and throttle body removed.
I'm pretty sure the two right-most bolts on the exhaust manifold aren't supposed to be completely loose and hanging half out of their holes... I think I'll just put these back and hope for no exhaust leaks. Or maybe I'll buy a new exhaust manifold gasket and replace the bolts before torquing them to spec. We shall see.
Well, the fan's finally off, and 3 of the 5 bolts holding the crank pulley came out. The other two, the allen bit greased out of the bolt head and rounded it nicely. Plan B was to use a bolt exctractor. That's not gone well. I guess I'll have to drill them a bit, but to do that, I should first remove the bumper and grille...
OK, who designed this? That's a 10mm hex pointing down and holding the bumper on, but the plastic's mangled enough around it I can't really get a wrench onto the bolt head. And then there's a phillips head bolt pointing up and holding the grille on, but there's only about an inch in front of it, so you can't actually fit a screwdriver in, at all...
Nope, plan C won't work. Can't fit a drill in here to either drill the bolt heads to take the extractor more securely, or just drill the heads off and the worry about drilling and retapping the crank sprocket later. Plan D was to loosen the center 17mm nut and remove the sprocket and pulley together, with the timing belt cover wedged between them, and hope that the timing belt itself could somehow be wiggled free. That also didn't work, because one would need to hold the flywheel, and it's behind a cover which could only be removed by splitting the crank case from the bell housing...
Plan D is to cut slots in with a Dremel for a flat-head bit, and hope that stays in place while applying impact wrench to it. That bites the dust, because even with a flex-shaft, you can't get the disk in at anything close to the right angle. Plan E is to go to home depot tomorrow and buy a Dremel 90 degree angle attachment and turn the dremel into a mini angle grinder... I have no idea what plan F is, and hope I don't need to come up with one.
Plan F apparently involves discovering that while the screws holding the plastic bumper cover are idiotically tiny phillips-heads that are totally rusted over, the bumper itself is held on with four good solid 14-mm bolts, which can be removed without removing the plastic first.
Plan G involves the observation that all this oil here means that it would probably be worth replacing the oil pan gasket while I'm at it. It also involves the discovery that, because of the front differential being in the way, replacing the oil pan gasket requires lifting the engine. It also involves the calculation that buying a $100 engine hoist off craigslist and selling it for $100 when done would cost less out of pocket than buying a dedicated 90-degree drill to get at those -bleep-ing crankshaft pulley bolts...
Success! Or, rather, failure. But failure that lets me move on to the next step... Ended up not hearing back from any of the folks selling $100 engine hoists, and also discovered that hoisting the engine would probably require dropping the diff anyway, so the oil pan clears it when sliding the engine forward to clear the tranny. So I bought a $20 angle adapter for the drill, instead of blowing $60 on the dedicated angle drill. Then I couldn't fit a deep enough hole to get a good bite with the extractors into the heads, so drilled the heads right off. This now means that I need to remove the sprocket so I can finish drilling the bolts out on the drill press...
Also, there should be a tensioner spring on the tensioner wheel, but I think that's only really needed to set the tension; once the wheel is bolted in, the spring is superfluous. Or something. I'll have to decide whether to splurge on replacing it anyway. And also the plastic timing belt cover, which is pretty mangled.
Well, lost a week to a cold, and another to a spazzing back, but now I'm back at it. Finally applied enough heat, penetrating oil, and pure raw unadulterated torque (thanks Megan and Lukas (and Mia) for the help on that front) to get the sprocket off. I'm not sure this keyway is supposed to be this far from straight...
I'm also pretty sure the screws here are supposed to be holding the rocker arms down, rather than sitting down by the valve seat... Oh, and also, tons of oil/coolant up here. Is there a way to deal with that, other than filling 'er with fresh oil, and maybe changing it in a hunnert miles?
Other question now is whether this screw has damaged anything else, or whether I should just chase the threads and put it back again, and torque it to spec... Two or three other screws were super loose, but hadn't fallen out yet...
I suspected that I would be optimistic enough to decide to replace the front end seal in hopes of not bollocksing it up, since I'm in there anyway, and before I permanently goop the timing gear key into the worn keyway. I also suspected I would very shortly thereafter regret that decision... I guess I'll have to buy another new front-end seal at NAPA now...
Well, that's the head removed. I wonder whether the carbon deposits here need anything doing about them?
More random wires not connected up... I wonder what this one does...
The head, on the bench.
Gasket surface on the head.
Gasket surface on the block. Not sure how aggressively to clean these. They need to be clean, but they also need to not be gouged or scratched up...
Close-up of combustion chamber on #4. A bit of carbon build-up... I'm guessing this is the end at which the head gasket's been leaking slowly for a while?
Surroundings of #1 after a bit of engine degreaser on paper towel. A tiny bit of pitting here---Is that going to be a problem?
Gasket surface on head, after an hour with engine degreaser and plastic abrasive pads from the grocery store. Latex dishwashing gloves do not stand up to this sort of silliness. I'll see if the local hardware store has heavy-weight nitrile gloves. Let's enjoy not getting too much cancer :)
Close-up of #1, showing the minor pitting a bit more clearly.
Surface on the block side isn't coming quite as clean as the head, but I think this is just staining and should be fine. I think.
Took advantage of the manifolds not being there to degunk the sides of the block a bit. Not perfect, but better than it was...
The keyway on the crankshaft snout was kinda worn, so now we fix that...
Masked it off with electricians tape before scuffing the insides with fine emery cloth (to avoid scuffing the seal, or anything else)
Removed the masking, degreased the area, put down clean masking.
Permatex stuff for repairing worn keyways and bearing surfaces. Also, I'm re-using the old key, having given it a couple of passes over the emery cloth to put a nice cross-hatching on in.
This bit of the job was a bit messy, as I was wearing gloves, the key is very small, and it took far more goo than I thought on the first application. But the instructions on the goo say the stuff outside the cracks you're repairing won't harden, so can be easily cleaned off. I have no idea how they pull that kind of magic off...
The critical bit here, since the key is a half-moon, is to make sure it's reasonably even: if it's sticking up too much at the front or back, the gear won't fit on... I pretty much installed it by feel, as you can't actually get your head in to sight from this angle. Cameras are small.
As advertised, the excesses wiped clean real easily.
For completeness, the timing gear itself bolted back on. Got it to about 90 ft-lbs before I lost control of the flywheel with the prybar, which is close enough to 94, especially given the old-school beam-style torque wrench...
And the head bolted back into place with a minty fresh gasket. I'll let the loctite on the timing gear set overnight before putting a timing belt on it and setting the valve lash and siliconing the valve cover in place.
Well, to quote Jeremy Clarkson, "that's not gone well"... Got everything except the radiator put back in, and poured a gallon of oil into the oil fill hole. Then grabbed the radiator, dropped it into place, and noticed that the rag stuffed into the lower radiator hose was dripping!?!?? So I pulled it out, and a pint of the nice fresh oil I just put into the engine came pouring out... This is no longer looking like it ever was a mere gasket, and that it probably is a cracked block (or possibly head). I think this means I cut my losses and sell it as a parts car, or recipient for a new engine, if someone wants to go that route.