Happy New...Not Yet!

On the last day, with only a few hours left of 2014, I get to announce some good news:

The engine is fully installed, all bits and pieces aligned and the Rocky Mountain Westy carrier bar fully installed as well. The engine is now entirely self supporting and all of the lifts, jacks, cherry-pickers, etc. have returned to their regular storage spaces, e.g. not in the garage where space is limited and they are badly underfoot.

The fully installed transmission, adapter, engine and engine carrier assembly. Sorry for the Soviet era picture: my camera was slightly on the fritz.

You can see how the whole affair bolts together, and I've included this second picture of how the main carrier bar not only bolts to the body of the bus, but also how it connects to trailing outriggers which extend to the rear of the engine compartment to bolt through the frame hole intended for the original carrier bar:

As per usual, I worked diligently to do everything the hard way. I previously mentioned replacing the the throw-out bearing before mating the engine and adapter to the transmission. I replaced the TO bearing with whistle-while-you-work unconcern, then spent an atrocious amount of time getting the engine mated up to the trans. Don't let anyone kid you: an EJ engine does not appreciate being supported from the bottom, and even if you have a cherry-picker style engine hoist, the center of mass of the EJ engine makes hanging it a challenge.

You'll just have to do what I did: Try, try again-- and don't ever give up.

Having got it all the way together, I bolted up the carrier bar and hung the engine from it. Some jiggling and the use of some 3mm aluminum shims from Rocky Mountain Westy to correct engines that were not aligning with the body and I looked all set.

Read over my Bentley manual that night which I had left open to the section on replacing the TO bearing just before I did the work. I reviewed it again....and discovered I'd really humped myself.

There is a sleeve that the TO bearing rides on: inside the sleeve is the transmission input shaft. This sleeve is bolted onto the transmission. There should be a light coating of new lubricant on the outside surface of the sleeve for the Inside Diameter of the TO bearing to ride on.

That sleeve was dry as a bone. Clean! But dry.

There's nothing that improves your speed of performing a procedure than practice. To my credit, it only took me 4 hours to take the whole thing apart completely (engine, carrier, transmission adapter) lightly lube the outside of that throw-out bearing sleeve and put the whole mess back together again. Along the way, I discovered that the transmission hanger bolts (at the top of the bell-housing) were installed incorrectly as well. I fixed that, too.

So the engine is in, complete.

Next up will be installation of the throttle valve reverser.

Once the TVR is in, that will put the throttle valve assembly within reach so I'll be grafting the stock throttle cable end together with the cable end that came out of the donor 97 Impreza. I've seen an installation trick I've wanted to try...

Ok...now. HAPPY NEW YEAR! (Because I intend to run this engine in 2015!)