Removing the engine
 

I started to strip my donor (CFi CVH) today with the aid of a haynes sierra owner's workshop manual and thought it best to try and get the engine and gearbox out 1st. I managed to get as far as removing the air and draining the coolant but then started to struggle a bit as I don't know much and trying to learn as i go and what a lot of the parts should look like when the book says remove x from y. Especially with all the hoses that connect into everything! Should I just try and disconnect everything attached to the engine and worry about what they are later when I try to get the engine into the roadster? Or just slowly work through each bit as I get stuck and follow the order the book says? Any suggestions would be appreciated to help out a newbie, stuck at the moment on trying to work out what hose/s are the brake servo that connect to the inlet manifold? (not really sure what the inlet manifold looks like either..)

If you are unsure just take lots of pictures, you will be able to get it out with almost everything still attached anyway, dont worry about the servo on the brakes its not needed for the roadster

If you find by the time you get round to fitting it into your roadster you are stuck a quick photo on here and someone will know where the part in question goes

Just ask TT on here ive never known anyone with as much knowledge on sierras as him :eek:

The inlet manifold is on the opposite side to the exhaust manifold and lets the air into the engine

i would say get the area around the engine clear first, all the wiring, hoses e.c.t out so that when you remove the engine from its mounts i should just come straight out.

like you say this is all new to you so just take your time, sometimes removing things like alternators, manifolds, powersteering pumps, washer bottles and the like first can help, they allow you to see more of whats going on in the engine bay.

i havnt stripped my sierra yet but have done plenty of other cars, sometimes taking the front bumper and radiator off can help as it allows the engine to slide out rather than be lifted

hope this helps

If you have a look at the first gallery in my signature then you can see how I stripped my donor. I would remove any small fragile bits that could be knocked or damaged, but leave big items like manifold and carb in place until you've got the engine out.

If you can the easiest way is to drop the cradle,engine and box in one piece and do the same with the rear axle and strip off the bits you need.

I have done it this way and believe me it saves a boat load of time if you can do it this way,just ask Handy Andy.

Good advice there Paul :)

I seem to remember that when you stripped HandyAndy's donor, you was all done before Andy got back with his van :D

I reckon he was back at his place drinking tea :D

[Brainbug

Grab yourself a roll of masking tape & a permanent marker n label everything you remove .... Even if that means writing numbers or letters if you do not know the components names ;)

As said, if unsure, post a picture on here & help will be forthcoming.

His face was a picture Ronnie he could not speak for at least ten miinutes and walked round the garage shaking his head in disbelief .

Drove in and was dragged out a shell on a chain.

I would loved to have been there .... Andy .... Speechless :eek: :D

Seriously, I spoke to Andy about it at Stoneleigh & he was absolutely gobsmacked that you srtipped it so quickly.

That's where a lifetime of professional knowledge helps :cool:

I don't envy you mate, done a lot of major work in my time but never in an against the clock enviroment ;)

To be honest, I,m still in awe of how quickly Paul stripped my donor :eek: Paul did an amazing job, I hardly got my hands dirty at all, I spent more time sweeping & mopping up than holding a spanner ,

Paul is telling it how it was, drove the car into the workshop at 8.15am & towed the shell out on its floorpan at 4pm with everything I needed from it in the back of my van .

Brainbug, enjoy the strip down, take lots of photos, especially of the fuel & coolant pipes around the engine, will help later on in your build.

cheers
andy

All you ford guys are very lucky!
It took me allmost 2 days to strip the skyline of its valuables! Worst bit on the gearbox was the fact that it was 4x4 so had tons of extra stuff attatched all over. And front driveshafts were a complete pain to remove. I put the engine and box on some scales and it came to 242kg >_< and also broke the scales.

Anyhow like the guys said just take loads and loads of photos. Also when you remove plugs from bits put stickers on the wires and the plugs they came from and lable them. This will help loads later down the road. Also get a load of old takeaway box's and stick lables on them with what bolts are from what bits. i have about 20 tubs full of labled nuts,bolts and bits. This will also save you a massive amount of time later. (can also put some cleaning solution in them as well!) oh and did i say take more pictures?

As a rule i try and go around the hole engine and gearbox removing everything thats connecting them to the shell, then remove the engine. after that collect the wires and anything else thats handy. But i try and leave any of the tubes connecting bits of the engine to other bits of the engine on. Its a bit different from my engine as with the turbo and intercooler pipes it added a load of extra junk.

Hope that helped a little.

Still brings that wry smile to my face thinking about it and sitting reading and writing on here,to be fair to all reading this and stripping their donor,s I am as Ronnie says a proffesional mechanic (£50 inthe post) with all the facillitys and silly amounts of tools etc so I admire the efforts of those who do not have the gear I have and do things on drive's etc as there is no way on this earth I would lay on the ground pulling cars apart.

Well I made some more progress today, lots of masking tape stuck to everything with numbers written on it for everything I've disconnected. Slow going but making good progress :) Lots of the rubber pipes are in bad shape though, most have holes or rotten completely and barely hanging on by a thread. Amazing the engine would still run like this let alone pass an MOT a few months ago :S

watch out for the masking tape dropping off or the ink fading.

The 4pot sierra's are easy cars to work on, and pulling the cars with Type 9's are easier still.

TT

Short cut
 

I've strippped 4 sierra's so far.
If you have no particular plans with the body, the best you can do is to remove the radiator and cut away the beams between the headlights.
This gives you "full access" to the engine and makes it easy to remove the complete engine-and-transmission.

Eddy

I take it cutting/removing the beams and radiator won't affect the stability of it when i put it onto axle stands to remove the stuff off the bottom?

It will be fine the front chassis legs are very strong.

TT

Kinda stuck again. Managed to get what I think is the distributor off (small box under the manifold with 4 x red wires connection into the oppisite side of the engine at the top) and started working on trying to get the 6xbolts off for the manifold and one of the nuts has got stuck 1/2 way up the thread. Whenever I turn the nut now the bolt turns with it. I've tried holding the bolt with a pliers but cant seem to get a tight enough grip on it. I've also tried spraying liberally with wd40. Any ideas how to get it off?

Why are you taking it off?

TT

Well the engine has done 95k so was planning on stripping the whole thing down to clean it up and replace anything that was in bad shape and thought it would make getting the engine out easier to remove all of the parts attached to the engine.

did it run ok beforehand?

TT

Ya it sounded ok and I gave it a test drive and then drove it home (still MOT'd until november) but it's got some rust and a lot of the hoses were cracked or rotten.

I would not take it apart then, especially if it's your first time doing this sort of thing.

The engine will come out easily there's a mass of space round the CVH.

TT

If you are talking about a manifold stud just keep on turning and the stud will come out then you can get the nut off when its off the car

Fair enough TT, still kind of stuck with the bolt though as I'll need to screw the nut back in. The bolt head is kind of inside the engine if that makes sense and isn't accessible?

From experience, the easiest way to remove a cvh engine is with a 4 tonne forklift truck!

That will just be a stud that screws into the cylinder head, If the nut has stuck to the thread ( They often are ) Just unscrew it all the way out ;)

It wil not harm the engine in any way :)

Once you have removed the stud & nut, you can either try to remove the nut from the stud or simply buy a new stud.
M8 manifold studs are not very expensive to replace & are easy to obtain.

From personal experience, you are lucky thet the whole stud is turning .... It is not unusual for them to snap off when the nuts have become rusted to them :eek:

Ah right, so these studs are just bolts without a head? In the picture I've attached I've circled one of these that you can see, the one with the stuck nut is kind of behind the dipstick.

Yes they are just studs & pefectly safe just to remove the whole thing

Here's an idea of the kind of replacement available.

Ford Manifold studs

Shop around for them as prices vary wildly but can be bought quite cheaply ;)

I quite frequently remove the studs from a cylinder head when working on one, makes life a lot easier when it comes to laying it of its side or removing the valves :)

Worked on stripping a bit more today and got a bit farther. Slow going and my back is killing me now, but nothing a few beers wont sort out :) Managed to get the alternator off and started trying to get the power steering off that sits above the alternator but got stuck again :( One of the bolts holding on wont come off without removing the exhaust manifold so I started taking that off. I got all the studs holding the manifold to the block but I'm really struggling to undo the studs that hold the manifold onto the exhaust pipe. The whole manifold is quite rusty and the studs are in really tight and badly rusted too. I've tried wd40 again but still wasn't enough to loosen them. Any ideas on a good way to undo these or get around it?

If you are intending to use the same exhaust manifold on your build, don't get too angry with the fixings holding the down pipie to manifold , they are almost certainly going to snap, leaving you to drill the broken studs from the manifold :eek:

Here's a couple of ideas.

Pull the manifold assembly to one side, tie it back out of the way & sort it once you have removed the engine.

Secondly, chop the manifold off by cutting through the downpipe, leaving a few inches of the downpipe for you to play with when fabricating your Roadsters exhaust.
Very unlikely that you will need the Sierras downpipe in its current form .

Now, I can't remember if the exhaust is mounted to the manifold using nuts & studs or bolts.
Eiter way, heat will help .... Heat very hot and then quench with cold water ( This will destroy the rust bond ).

If nuts & studs are used, grind one side of the nut away, taking great care not to hit the threads with the grinder .... Heat of grinding should break the bond, if not, once almost down to the thread, spread the nut a little using a chizel.
This job will be much easier with the manifold removed from the car & the rusty threads can be cleaned up with a die :)

Great suggestions bonzo, unfortunately they didnt work :( Because of where it sits theres no way to get the grinder in there. Tried heating it up with a blow torch and pouring water on it but still didn't loosen it, then the nut kind of disentigrated on me so now theres no way to get it off now. I did manage to get the downpipe disconnected though farther along underneath the car so the whole thing will have to come out with the engine and then try to get it off afterwards. Theres also a sensor of some kind that connects into the downpipe that I cant get off (again rusted on solid) so I'm gonna have to just disconnect the wire from the loom I reckon and just leave the wire attached to the downpipe and try and get it off later (dont really like working under the car any more than I need to). Think I've got everything else disconnected now though so hopefully I can pull it out next weekend with the help of a friends crane :)

Sensor
 

The sensor in the down pipe is probably the Lahmde sensor, I'm no expert but I think it sends information to the engine management system about how the engine is burning and if it needs to change the fuel air mixture or not. If anybody knows any better please feel free correct my mistake.

All the best with your build.

If it's a CFi then yes it probably is a Lambda Sensor.

22mm ( may be 24mm ) Ring spanner and a swift tap with a rubber mallet usualy gets them going.

TT

Ok good to know what it's called. I'll try and get it off once the engine is out, I take it I'll still need it on the roadster for the engine to work properly? Also, theres another connection on the exhaust manifold itself, kind of a metal pipe that goes around to somewhere behind the engine. I can't really see where it goes and I'm wondering if I need to disconnect it before taking the engine out? (in case it doesn't connect onto the engine but something else). I've attached a couple of pictures of it. I tried loosening it but again it's on really tight and not really sure which of the hex's you have to loosen? (one closest to the manifold needs a 1 inch wrench, other is much bigger and not sure what size wrench as I didn't have one big enough to fit it).

Not sure what that is but it looks like an oil pipe, if you don't get a decent answer tonight I have got a 1.6 CVH Sierra and my Haynes manual at work, I can have a look tomorrow and then let you know.

If I am not mistaken, that pipe in the manifold looks very much as if it is part of some form of. Exhaust Gas Recirculation, EGR as it is known !!??
All part of the emissions crap that they stared to put on some cars.

Any how, hold the bottom fitting with a wrench to stop it from turning & undo the top fitting using another wrench.

You can expect that fitting to be very tight due to heat & corrosion , they often are :eek: :(

looks like EGR or air injection both would be for emissions

So main question, where does it go and do I need to worry about disconnecting it before taking the engine out?

I had a look on the 1.6 CVH but it doesn't have one, so I would say the best thing to do is try to trace its route, you will probably find it does go somewhere else on the engine then when you lift the engine out just keep a close eye on it to make sure its not connected else where.

Been trying to get the engine out again today. Decided to try and get the engine out without the gearbox as the underside of the car is badly rusted and I don't really feel very safe working under it while it's on axle stands. I tried getting the prop shaft off the gearbox and again the bolts are badly rusted and stuck tight and it seemed to groan a bit when I tried using a hammer and wrench to loosen them. So I thought it would be best to leave the gearbox and bottom of the car for now and get the engine out, then flip the car onto its side to get everything off the bottom of the car. Problem is when I tried rocking the engine forward and back to release it from the gearbox it wouldn't budge. I can't see any other bolts holding it in and I had my wife doing the rocking while I looked around the seam to see if it was seperating anywhere and it wasn't :( Can anyone shed any light on where I'm likely to be going wrong? I've lifted the engine clear of the studs on the rubber bits holding it to the chassis so I know it's not stuck there...