thebeerbaron

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The engine is out of the Blue Beast at last. I arrived at the shop on Saturday morning with the thought in my head that maybe we had accidentally re-engaged the passenger-side engine mount while jiggling the motor around. I rolled under the car and found that the tip of the engine mount stud was ever so slightly engaged in the subframe. A couple of quick pumps on the engine hoist and some careful pry-bar usage finally separated the engine from the transmission. Woohoo!

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Then it was just a matter of getting the engine out of the bay. Too bad about that O2 sensor... I was careful, but later found a nick in the wiring. Probably worth it to put in a new one anyhow. With the engine in the air, I discovered my engine stand bracket wouldn't fit over the clutch pressure plate, so I zipped that off. I love having compressed air just lying around waiting to be used. With the bracket attached, it was time to put the engine onto the engine stand. Which meant popping the casters off the engine stand and re-greasing them. And then knocking the worst of the surface rust off the mating surfaces of the stand and applying a dab of grease to ease things along (someone had stored this engine stand outside). Then I discovered that some novice had neglected to check if the arm length on the hoist was enough to slide the engine into the stand. It wasn't. Carefully put the engine down with some wood blocks under the oil pan, quickly extend the hoist arm and then finally onto the stand... Comedy of errors.

Life is much better with the engine on a stand. I got back to New York yesterday with no new scrapes or cuts on my hands and the grease under my fingernails was far less than it had been earlier in the process. It was a fairly simple matter to pop the intake manifold off the motor, but lots and lots of labeling of connections. Hope it's enough. With that job done, I took the shop vac to the engine. The wide flat boxer engine is apparently a great storage place for nut shells, twigs, and other junk. I wouldn't eat off it, but it's nice to have a fairly clean work surface.

From here it was all just simple disassembly. I won't bore you with the details, but I will point out a few issues that I ran into. The biggest issue was getting these cam bolts out.
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They require a 10mm hex key and about five steroid-abusing gorillas worth of torque to remove. The approach I took was to leave the timing belt on, since there's no surface on the cam which you can put a wrench on to keep the cam from moving. With the belt on, all I needed was to lock the crank in place. After trying a few things, I came up with my own crank-holding tool.

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This is part of the bracket that holds the alternator and A/C compressor to the engine. I've held it to the block using a bellhousing bolt, the other end slips over one of the locating pins for the clutch pressure plate. You don't really get to choose [i]where[/i] the crank lines up, but it does keep it from moving.

Even with the belt keeping the cams from moving, my impact gun couldn't budge those cam bolts. I tried setting the pressure above what the gun was rated to, no dice. The only good news was that the expensive impact bit I was using didn't round out the fasteners or self destruct.

What I ended up using was this.

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That's a Craftsman 16" long 1/2" breaker bar with half of a jack handle from a Harbor Freight aluminum quick-pump jack on it. The tennis ball is on there for safety. The one tool I didn't have handy was a tape measure, but a ballpark figure is 42" of leverage. The Craftsman tool was visibly bowing as I pulled [i]gently[/i] on those bolts. It took some serious force, but eventually three of the four popped off with loud bangs. A few needed further coaxing, but eventually three were finger tight. The fourth gave me heart burn. This is an interference engine. Not only can the valves interfere with the pistons, they can also interfere with each other. So it's [i]really[/i] important that these cams don't slip during this process. The fourth one did. Only about three notches on the belt, but enough for me to call it an evening.

The next morning I popped off the valve cover and checked the cam situation. The cam that slipped was thankfully at the lowest valve height, so i don't think anything could have interfered. What ended up working was taking the belt off, then wrapping it between the crank and the single cam, taking up slack using vice-grips. With that setup, I was able to hang off the breaker bar and crank the final bolt loose.

The rest of the head removal process was straightforward if time consuming. Lots of labeling of parts. The heads are off to the machine shop now for a minor refresh (grind flat, valve check/cleanup, new valve seals, etc). My friend the restoration expert is supposed to look at my short block and tell me if it should be refreshed too. Here's what it looked like...

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Probably looks worse than it is. Granted there was coolant everywhere, but the oil was not milky at all.

One more rambling note while I have your attention. I think I previously noted that I find the Subaru shop manuals inferior to their Mazda counterparts. One good illustration of that is in their writeup for how to remove the heads. They neglect to mention that in order to remove the passenger-side head, one has to remove the turbo assembly, as it not only hangs off the head, but has an oil feed, oil return, and coolant return that are connected to the head. Kroil and the impact gun made short work of the relevant bolts, but somehow I had thought I could avoid removing the turbo. It's more oil and coolant connections that could leak after I reassemble them!

Right now I've got a list of parts I think I need to order to reassemble this thing. I wish I had good parts diagrams, but honestly, they've been hard to come by. Sigh.