Nothing to see here, move along

While it's true there is nothing to see, it doesn't mean that I have failed to make progress (apologies for the double negative) - it simply means I've been too lazy to take the camera with me into the garage.

At the time of my last post my tinware removal effort had been hampered by four particularly sticky screws. After much soaking in WD-40 one of these yielded with the help of my mole wrench. The other three still refused to budge and so I dug out the blow lamp. I wish I'd done that earlier as each screw only took about 30 seconds of heat before turning with very little effort.

The next task was to remove the exhaust system. This entails removing four pairs of bolts - one pair per cylinder. Three of the rear bolts (rear is relative to how the engine is mounted in the car)  came out with virtually no effort - once some heat had been applied by my new best friend, the blow torch. The third rear bolt still took very little effort, but it was the stud that unscrewed rather than the bolt.

The four front bolts have proved to be much more problematic. Even with the application of loads of heat the neither the bolts, or the studs to which they are attached, have moved an inch. I don't want to use too much pressure as that could snap the studs. On my next attempt I think I will carefully heat the case instead of the nut in the hope of releasing the studs as they will need to be replaced.

One in the Eye for Gravity.

My brother in law Bob kindly came round tonight to help me lift the engine while Fiona removed the dolly and then pushed in the stand - thirty seconds and it was done. I was delighted that the engine stand doohickey held. Here is the proof:

Last night I removed the inlet manifold (though I sheared two hotspot bolts in the process). This meant that tonight I could attempt to take off the last of the tinware. Using a combination of a large screw driver and a mole wrench I managed to loosen all but four screws. These stubborn individuals are responsible for holding the two halves of tinware together at the front of the engine (i.e. the flywheel end). They have been soaked regularly in WD-40 but to no avail. I did some delving and discovered that in the wonderful world of penetrating oils (probably more of an island than a whole world) that WD-40 is not considered the best. In fact in one test it seems that nothing could a 50/50 mix of acetone and ATF (automatic transmission fluid). I'll make some up and report back later...

Temporarily flummoxed by the tinware I decided to turn my attention to the engine oil. As I said in an earlier post, in the 27 years the car had been sitting the oil had turned to jelly. This jelly - or joilly as I like to call it - was too thick to come out the engine's drain plug. However removing the oil sieve left an orifice large enough for even joilly to flop through. Here it is collecting in a basin. Lovely. When I have collected enough I will see if a spoon will stand up in it or not...
 

Impending Progress

Since my last post there hasn't been much actual progress, but a few small steps have been made in the right direction. In my last post I'd sorted out how to mount the engine to the engine stand mount (officially it's called a yoke but I can't decide how to spell it... yoke, yolk?). However before the engine could be attached it was necessary to remove the flywheel. To do this it was necessary to use a four foot scaffold tube (thanks to Cathie and Bob) as a cheater bar and also use a similarly lengthed piece of angle iron bolted to the flywheel to prevent it rotating. Even with all that leverage it still took a lot of effort to get the gland nut to turn. A few minutes of flywheel jiggling later saw it successfully removed and added to the ever increasing "to be cleaned" pile.

The next task was attaching the mount/yoke/thingummy. This was simply a matter of bolting the arms on to the engine casing (using the washers I'd made earlier) and then tightening everything up. The stand came with four arms but I could only use three due to their length - this should be fine as it seems most people use a two armed doohickey (and in fact I'll drop to two when I need to split the case). Here's the result of all my work:

All I need now are a few helpers to lift the engine onto the stand.

The other outstanding (no pun intended) task was to remove the seized wheel drum. Patience at an end I attacked it with my hack saw. After a couple of hours work I had excised two sections leaving me enough room to dismantle and remove the internals, i.e. brake cylinder, shoes, springs and spacers.

 

The internals have now been thoroughly soaked in WD-40 - though just attacking what's left with the hack saw is looking quite tempting.

An Evening of Metalwork

Today I took delivery of all the high tensile nuts, bolts and washers needed to connect the engine to the engine stand's generic yoke. While on the topic of hardware I'd recommend Parker Tools - they sell nuts bolts etc individually at very reasonable prices.

The aforementioned delivery included four 50mm x 50mm square washers (3mm thick). The idea was to modify these washers to closely fit the circular flange on the engine casing in an attempt to transfer the load to where it is designed to be. Here is one of the modified washers next to the original.

And here is a picture showing all four washers in situ.

This is a low cost attempt to simulate the proprietary VW engine yokes. Time will tell whether or not this plan works. However before I can find out I need to remove the flywheel because the arms of the generic yoke foul its teeth.

I managed to get hold of a 1 metre long bit of angle iron to act as a lever (see the previous posting on my last attempt). Unfortunately, even though the lever and socket were up to the job I was not. I just couldn't get the gland nut to budge. More leverage is required... a bit of scaffold pole perhaps. I feel a phone call to my sister coming on (as her house is currently surrounded by scaffolding).

The Engine Strip Down Begins

I started stripping down the engine yesterday - or more precisely started removing things from the engine in preparation for its strip down.

The first item off was the clutch - six bolts removed evenly to prevent distortion. Next the flywheel. This is held on with a nut tightened to around 220 lb foot so it is necessary to prevent the flywheel turning. Using the nut at the other end of the crankshaft isn't an option as the forces involved would likely damage the crankshaft. I decided to use a big lever between two of the clutch bolts - pictured below.

Unfortunately this lever was not up to the job and bent - and so did all the other levers I had to hand. So this job was shelved until a stronger bit of metal can be found.

The carburettor was next off in preparation for removing the fan housing. The latter has a control rod running from the thermostat on the bottom of the engine. This control rod needs to be disconnected before the fan housing can be lifted. In future I'll know to remove the thermostat when the engine is still in the car because removing it once the engine is out, but still not on a stand, is a bit awkward. This is how engine looked once the fan housing was off (the tower block in the foreground is the oil cooler).

Next the fuel pump and dynamo pedestal were removed. The pedestal is also used as the oil filler and it was completely full of gunk - as can be seen from this picture of the underlying gasket.

Its clear from this picture that I won't be able to avoid splitting the crankcase as the whole case will need to be cleared of such gunk and rebuilt. Of course the easy option would be to continue removing the ancillaries and buy a replacement engine (with lead free heads). I'm in two minds...