Time to do some laundry!

I had a bunch of chores to run today, but afterwards I spent most of the time washing the dirty, grimy parts that I have accumulated so far.

It took a LOT of laundry detergent (no, I'm not kidding) and even more elbow grease, but they turned out pretty decent. Here are some pictures of the cleaned-up parts:

First of all the heap that used to be the oil pan gasket:
Gasket remains

Transmission bell housing plate, this goes under the oil pan and bolts to the bottom of the transmission bell housing
Bell housing plate

The valve cover:
Valve cover underside

Finally, the oil pan itself:
Clean oil pan

So, now that stuff is cleaned up, it's time to start bolting this baby back together! Starting tomorrow, hopefully no nasty surprises!

The oil pan

I took one look at the oil-drenched oil pan and decided that it need to be cleaned up. I know, I know, not really related to the head repair (and yes, it IS already fun enough by itself!), but still, I had half the engine apart anyway...

I had to end up taking the steering rack off so the oil pan would have enough clearance to slide out. It's not really as bad as it sounds, two big bolts and it slides off the mounting frame, providing just enough clearance.

After many a scraped knuckle, out came the oil pan and pump. There was a little bit of sludge in there, but nothing a good ole' wash won't take off. I already have the oil pan gasket, I'm just waiting for some daylight to do the washing and scrape off the remnants of the old gasket from the pan side (the engine side is already done). Some pictures:

The oil pan with gasket remnants and the oil pump below:
oil pan and pump

Bottom of the engine, note the dipstick poking down on the right and the drive assembly for the oil pump on the left:
crank shaft

Head is shot :-(

As the title says, I got that dreaded phone call this morning:

"Sorry dude, the head's got a crack in it..."

So much for that... After not too much pondering, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge (or should I say splurge) and order a brand-spanking new head (not BMW though) from BMA Autoparts. Thanks to Neil for recommending these guys, they were really nice and supportive (even *before* I told them I wanted to buy a head! ;-) ) .

My reasoning: An engine swap would have costed me time and money I'm not willing to spend at this time. Speaking of money, here's what it cost and what I got:

AMC Cylinder head (came with valves and valve springs pre-installed) $800.-

Complete head gasket set (incl. head gasket, manifold gaskets, valve seals,cam seals, thermostat housing seals, diverse O-rings, etc) $ 75.-

Set of newer-spec torx cylinder head bolts $20.-

Bunch of misc. bolts (these are the one-time use ones, e.g. for exhaust pipe, exhaust manifold, etc)

Grand total for all that: $905.-

Just so it's done right (I hope!) I'm having this machine shop (where the old head is) swap the rest of the parts for me.

Total cost for swap: $140.- ($40.- is actually for dismantling the old head which they did to pressure-test it)

So that's that... $1045.- total expenses on this trip... Hope to have better news from here on... Stay tuned...

Connector pic and small head update

I went by an automotive machine shop this morning and found that I could have the head machined and cleaned AND re-adjusted for $200.- That was the plan.

Right now, my back hurts too much, I'm not going to the machine shop tomorrow morning.  Instead, I'll go ahead and order the parts that I know I'll need (head bolts, manifold bolts, gaskets, etc). That will also give me a bit of time to unbolt the exhaust manifold off the head. Machine shop dude told me this morning it had be off (makes sense).

As promised, a couple of pictures of the connector that plagued me for a while, need to find a way to clean this guy up and prevent this from happening again:

The one end
The other end

Looking at the head...

A closer look

Took a gander at the head, now that I have it off. Found a little nick in the otherwise completely intact head gasket, so I'm going to blame that for the coolant leak. Some more pictures...

Head gasket
Possible failure point of gasket
Combustion chambers 1, 2 and 3
Combustion chambers 4, 5 and 6

More head repair...

The big day, the head is OFF!

So finally, after a several scrapes, bruises, and cussing, the head is FINALLY off!! I lost patience with the stuck connector and took a big wrench to it. Well, I didn't break it, but it turned out that the thing has ALL the connectors in it oxidized the crap out of!! The stuff is all green!! Will take a picture of that, forgot to take that one...

Block with head removed
Head with valve cover removed
Head removed from engine
Close-up of a valve assembly
Sludge on the valve cover underside

Head repair contd.

Delving deeper into the M20

So we dive deeper into the ole M20 engine. The numerous hoses come off, making some more mess on the garage floor, but who's looking! ;-) Fuel lines are off, got a stuck connector (the one for the fuel injector harness), rapidly losing patience with this thing... Some more pictures:

Location of the stuck connector
Close-up of connector

The head repair

The saga begins

Started off by draining the coolant (will do oil later). Then started following Bentley Manual instructions to wrench the engine apart (from the top).

Of course, little hitches always make life interesting... The radiator drain plug (plastic) snapped right off as I tried to tighten it back up. I figured I'd use that picture above as the "theme" picture. Here are some pictures to say the proverbial thousand words:

Radiator
Engine bay with air filter assembly off
Broken radiator drain bolt