Day 6 ~ Prep for the big cleaning project

Well, I had help today to reorganize a bit so I can get to my archived parts washer. I feel much better now. Actually today's post-work-work began with an oil change on the Fusion. Wouldn't you know I forgot to double check the weights when the cashier was nice enough to go grab the quarts for me. Oops, another trip back to the store. Four 5W-20's and two 5W-30's are not what I was hoping for. That was a month or two ago when I pre-bought on a good Castrol Edge/K&N oil change special. Today holds another surprise for me. The other two bottles I replaced are both 5W-20 now...I triple checked. However, I failed to notice someone had pulled a fast one on the store & returned their oil purchase with used oil. Ok that's it. Now I have to check the type of oil and the tamper seal on every bottle. No big deal, just got me. The store was kind enough not to make an issue of it and promptly swapped me for a new bottle. Mmmm fresh oil...my baby likes!
  Ok so lots done so far, but nothing on the Firebird. I only have valves and oil pan left for the easy ones. I haven't decided whether I'm going to try removing cams or crank...probably not as long as I can adequately inspect them for wear or damage. I left the oil pan for another day and tackled the valves. They're pretty easy with the right tool. Also it's very handy to have a 20-egg carton around. I found a box [EDIT...to say rather, my  lovely assistant a.k.a. wife found the box - nailed when she read this...oops) to fit it perfectly, placed the carton on top of the open box, and punched holes in the 12 egg slots matching the valve placement on the engine. I labelled front, back, left, right, as well as cylinder # and Intake or Exhaust, so there's almost no way to get them mixed up. I'm feeling good about this project having labelled the snot out of everything. My memory is not doing so well these days as I've come to notice. Best not to take anything for granted anymore.
  Ok blogs, email, facebook, etc. all caught up. Time for sleepage.

Day 5 ~ Just get a little done

  I've been reading up on another person's kit car build blog. He stated early on that if you make it a point to go out and at least do something that soon enough, you'd be done. Well I'm so exhausted today from a hard day's work and too many late nights, that I really just want to go to bed. Nah. I headed down to the local O'Reilly Auto Parts store to "borrow" some tools. Tool rental is so handy. I don't know what I'd do without it...probably be broke buying all kinds of special-app tools.
  Anyway, so I grabbed the harmonic balancer puller, valve spring compressor, and decided to get a timing gear puller just in case it was needed. I went back to the house and grabbed a couple wrenches. Of course, just for the heck of it I lined up on cylinder #1 TDC, not that it was needed at that point, but it's always better to be there and not need to be, than forget and be in trouble.
  Wow that puller was great! I had the thing off in a jiffy, then took a few minutes to observe, take pics, and line up all the timing marks before removing the chain and sprockets. I wasn't out of adjustment on the tensioner, but close. Good thing I ordered the new set today with all the gaskets, freeze plugs, and head bolts. After removing the upper timing gear bolt, everything slid off pretty easily...no puller needed.
  A little cleanup and DONE, just in time to go return my tool rentals too before the store closes. Well off to go fall asleep to a movie with the wifey. = )

Day 4 ~ Beheaded

  Another late night is required so I can figure out just what parts to order to complete my rebuild kit. I found a super-helpful guy over at partsdinosaur.com who knows his stuff and has a pretty good website layout for engine rebuilding parts. He's prompt to reply to email, so I just need to get in there deeper now to figure out what I need to order.

  Pretty much everything's a breeze now that the engine's out on the stand. Of course I missed a bolt, or two, arg...4 on the lower intake plenum. No wonder it didn't wanna come off with only 8 of 12 removed. NOTE TO SELF...read the dern manual. It's right there. Well one thing I learned long ago is not to force things, so thankfully I didn't do any cracking or breaking today. = )  After the lower intake popped off, I got to take a good look at the blasted gasket seal. Dude, that thing blew out in so many places it's a wonder the engine ran with only one code (cyl 3 misfire)!
  Rocker arm/valve covers came off and then pulled the heads. Wow what a mess in there. Hydraulic lock it was. Amazingly I'm stoked to see that all cylinders are looking really good as far as wear goes. No vertical scratches or galling, and even a light remnant of the cross-hatching from the factory honing is still visible.
  I am bummed about the crankshaft balancer/damper. It requires a special puller to remove, and the front cover and timing chain assembly are hidden underneath. That will have to wait for tomorrow. With nearly 195k miles, and the kind of maintenance issues I'm seeing, I doubt it's been recently changed. I'll go ahead and order the new set. All in all, I'm happy to have a few things off. Really wishing I wouldn't have to guess at timing assembly condition though. That's a few bucks I'd like to save if I can.

Crusty buildup on Piston #1

Oil filling cylinder #5

Coolant filling up cylinder #3

  Enjoy the pics. Note the brownish goop on the head gaskets and contaminating the coolant. Someone apparently liked their StopLeak and overdosed. I'm wondering how much that kind of clogging contributed to the seal blowouts. NAS-T!

Day 3 ~ Engine Stand

Well, I decided to actually sleep Friday night instead of moonlighting on the rebuild. Sue me = )

I got a new helper today! My 2nd grader daughter decided she wanted to hang out with me and play something. Awesome! My wife grimaced at me when I told my girl to get some grubby clothes on. Sorry, I wasn't in the mood for a game of Pretty Pretty Princess today, and she's content to just be with me and doing something. So what better than to do something that interests us both, and I get to teach her! Cool.
  So anyway, we headed out to play a game of "I Spy" and in this case "...in my mind's eye something green." She guessed for a while then finally with a clue she looked down inside the lower intake plenum to the intake valve on cylinder #3 to point out the big puddle of antifreeze.

Notice the pieces of gasket blown into the
 intake channel above the coolant puddle.

  I had seen this when I took the engine out the other night/morning, but didn't have the energy or stupidity to keep working on it. Actually as I continued to peruse the engine with her out in the sunny driveway, we noticed that #1 and #6 were "underwater" as well. I guess now we know why the engine wouldn't keep turning over. To catch up on basic engine physics, the engine sucks in air and gas from the intake area down past the intake valve and into the cylinder. The valve then closes and the piston moves up and squeezes the air in tight compression. The spark plug ignites the fuel/air mix and pushes the piston back down with tremendous force which powers the momentum that (powers the car and) carries the piston back up to push out the exhaust air through the now-open exhaust valve. And then the cycle starts all over again. NOTE: Air IS compressible. Liquid, more specifically oil and antifreeze, is NOT compressible.
  So the last time I drove the Firebird I quickly shut it off when I noticed the plume of white smoke filling my mirrored view. Mind the engine was still running. However, later when I tried to start it briefly to listen for problem indicators, it only turned maybe 1 revolution before halting. That stop was caused because in letting it sit for a few minutes was all the time it needed to puddle up enough antifreeze and oil (from the blown lower intake plenum seal) to hydraulically lock the cylinder on the compression stroke.
  Thank God it happened at the low RPM of the starter. A hydraulic lock at running speeds can severely damage the pistons, connecting rods, and crankshaft to name a few. As it is, I don't expect any bending of parts. I'm hoping for a good cleaning, replacing gaskets and seals, and reassemble without too much ado.
  Ok rabbit trail done now. My baby girl helped me crank on the engine hoist all the way up to the stand. We took apart the clutch housing and removed the flywheel/driveplate. I got to teach her how they work, and she helped me inspect the wear. It's simply amazing how much these little ones can just absorb if you give them the opportunity. I'm just gonna say it. My kid is gettin' pretty darn smart. I pray she does something fantastic with all that brain power.
  A quick trip to the hardware store for some longer mounting bolts, and presto! Engine docking complete.

2ff ~ Engine Removal Woes

Let me just say . . . Oh my goodness! I have never had so many problems with seemingly simple things before. Maybe I'm just choosing not to remember. I got way bogged down in little things that took forever. Some of that is obviously due to lack of experience, some to lack of enough or proper equipment, but certainly somewhat to what I chalk up as poor design planning. Dad was what I'd call a good engineer. As a mechanic I'm prone to the old hatred for engineering flaws when it comes to practicality, so to say "good engineer" is kinda rare. The fatal flaw in bad, inexperienced, limited, or rushed engineering is that nothing is designed to last forever. Face it, that's the real world. However, that in mind, good time stewing over just what is likely to give out and how to reasonably perform major and minor fixes seems to be a lost art sometimes. That loss is greatly enhanced by one's inability to think through things this way because one has never tried much to actually DO the repair work. This is why I greatly appreciate and admire good engineering. No one can foresee or compensate for all problems, but some do definitely try. Dad, for one example was one who's profession was doing whatever it is that corporate engineers do to make things better in a world of increasing progress and technology. But by night, if the evening sNews wasn't overwhelming, he was probably out working on something that was worn out or broken on one of the cars. He suffered through the unending misery of inaccessible systems and poorly designed parts, and I have to believe that frustration turned into some contribution to the more practical, useful, and "common sense" technology we see employed in our vehicles every day now.
  That said, he didn't work for Pontiac when they chose to use some crazy fasteners (like double-ended-bolts) in ridiculously difficult areas (tucked inside the bottom of an engine mount between structural reinforcement) and put torque-locking nuts on odd-sized bolts (18mm does NOT typically come in a wrench set). Yes the electrical bonding strap was my favorite where two wrenches had to be countered in this tight area with brackets clogging the narrow pathway. And why a USA car uses almost exclusively metric fasteners I'll never know, but they do, and they like to use the sizes most true metrics don't use that often. So in a nutshell, I didn't label this "day" 2 because I wasted a day running to the auto parts store to get a special wrench and advice on removing the impossible upper bell-housing bolts without cutting the floor pan.
  Another day was gone because my helper was too tired to keep staying up late, and I don't blame her as my frustration inevitably turned me into someone not the most fun to sit with. I give her huge props for putting up with me. Most of the time I didn't have anything for her to do, but every once in a while, I'd make some progress, and she'd log a number and part name into my notebook with a corresponding label for me to stick on the wire harness. I apologized for being a dork, and we moved on.
   I think the 3rd night of work on the engine removal process, I got sick of the idea that the engine was still down in there. My help went to bed, but I kept plugging along realizing that the guys who wrote the manual were right about having to take off the upper intake plenum. I didn't want to because it would require removing alternator, fuel rails, evap components, coils and ignition harness. I got the big idea that it just might squeeze out so I could take all that stuff off when it sat nicely on a stand. It would have worked too if only the engine was pretend or at least smaller. Bummer, too tight to try. So whatever, I decided to take a few other things off while I was in the mood to & viola! Engine free from it's cage - up over the bumper - then gently down onto the floor pad. Only an hour and a half before I have to get up, so no time for glory pics. Maybe this Friday I'll remove the clutch and flywheel so I can mount it easily on the stand.

Day 1 ~ Intake Issues

Talk about restricted airflow

  In preparation for an engine overhaul or replacement, I began by doing a little cleaning up and rearranging things the other day to make room in a really tight area. Today I started tearing into the thing by taking apart and removing the intake assembly: filter's fine, air-charge/temperature sensor fine...throttle-body honeycomb screen nasty with debris. Yuck! I'll have to double-check my seals upon reinstallation. I spent the afternoon disassembling and cleaning the various components on the throttle body. Somehow, my MAF sensor survived the garbage and is fine.
 That's a relief. However, the throttle itself was stuck in place by corrosion buildup from oil and antifreeze. What in the world? I can only figure the oil came from the EGR pipeline. The whole intake manifold is nasty with the residue. It's no wonder I was having misfire codes in cylinder 3 (a benefit of ODBII is ability to know what's malfunctioning sometimes). I'm sure I'll discover when I pull the head how oil was getting into the exhaust in the first place. This one may or may not be worth rebuilding, but I'll learn a lot from pulling it apart and may be able to reuse some parts on another 3800 I called about in Raleigh.

   So I got the intake and throttle body off today, removed the hood, drained the radiator, and labelled some wires. With the a/c already out of charge, I'm ready to label and disconnect (in that order hehe) the remaining wiring connectors, hoses, and fuel lines (yes I relieved the pressure and disconnected the battery already. Thanks Dad, I knew you'd be commenting that otherwise). Almost ready to pull the engine... First I have to gather my engine stand and trusty assistant Velvet. She helps me out quite often and I have to give her props for sure. That's all for tonight. Now to figure out pics and throw 'em in.