I had a free afternoon today and it was warm enough so went and hid in the garage for a bit.
I was bored of subframe related activities so booled the block out from its corner on its ultra high tech engine stand.
The plan was to strip it down and see how far I got. Wuhan whistler / Tommy Tisher off.
I need to redo this return as it’s a bit of a bodge. It’ll be a doddle with the engine out and plenty of room to work in, instead of being folded backwards and working blind at some obscene angle with the engine in place.
With that off I started to take the rocker cover off. Popped the timing belt cover off first. I’m convinced the timing has always been slightly out on this engine. It was a replacement after I spun a bearing on the original and it was always miles slower than the original. That was one of the reasons why I took the huff and abandoned it in the garage for a decade in the first place.
The the rocker cover came off, but only after undoing the cam pulleys. Bit of a stupid design and I very much see now why people say you can’t just pop the rocker off to paint it!
Cams look ok. There’s a few marks on them but nothing I can feel so they’ll be going back in. Mileage on the engine is about 90k (+/- 5k either way)
I popped my 10 year/30,000 mile old cam belt off and as expected it’s perfect. Just more proof that the 5 year interval is a con. It always has and always will be the aux belt that’s the problem - as I’ve shown twice in this thread with badly perished belts that were relatively new. I might even re-use it just to see how many people I can trigger 🤣
Then it was head off time. All the head bolts came off nicely until one didn’t. The absolute c**t.
I bashed a couple of smaller sockets over it but none would bite hard enough to not pop off as soon as a bit of pressure was applied. So that’s good, isn’t it.
Only one thing for it. Swear a lot
The arsehole is now back in its corner where it belongs.
I’m not really sure how to tackle the bolt. I’ve done smaller sockets so kinda exhausted that option. Next I suppose is to consider drilling it but I can imagine that being an absolute nightmare. I did consider tightening it until it snapped, but I can guarantee it would either pull the thread out or snap level with the block and totally f**k me 🤦♂️