The Webmaster Zone

This weekend I pulled the engine and transmission out of my car with the help of my friend Scott. His dad has a warehouse with a huge 10 ton overhead crane setup that we used to lift it out of the car. Saturday morning dawned early and after a nice drive to Ladner (just south of Vancouver) we got everything set up and proceeded to drain the fluids and remove the oil cooler, radiator, carbs, manifolds, generator, distributor, starter, engine mounts, and various hoses. One of the manifold studs snapped during removal (I substituted a bolt during reassembly). It's amazing how much room you have to work on the engine bay when the radiator has been removed! We looked at the engine for a while and decided there was no way just the engine could come out. This is because the Bomber came with a later (black label LH type) overdrive and 4 sync transmission. This unit is a lot bigger than the original 3-sync tranny and so there is very little room in my early tunnel to manouvre. Since the tranny couldn't be raised, there was no way to get the engine off the first motion shaft and clear the steering rack and crossmember. So, out came Haynes and Bentley for a speed reading session and I proceeded to remove the clutch slave, wiring, speedo cable, propshaft, and crossmember from the transmission. With the tranny resting on the fixed crossmember, and the bonnet tied with a long rope to the rear bumper for maximum working room, we put the straps around the assembly and positioned the hoist. Very carefully, especially around the exhaust manifold which was still attached to the car, we took the weight of the engine and transmission and lifted it up a little. Then, after a series of lifting and pushing the car back steps, the assembly was tilted back and lifted free of the car. We lowered it to the floor and surveyed the carnage. It was pretty damn exciting let me tell you! This was the first time either of us had done anything like this before.

After cleaning the engine a little bit, we undid the bolts and separated the engine from the tranny. I wanted to give the engine a wash and paint but there's only so much time. I put the tranny aside and replaced the seals on the tappet covers and the oil pressure relief valve. Then we removed the clutch assembly from the flywheel. The flywheel was perfectly smooth and I hadn't had any trouble with it so I decided not to get it turned. The ring gear was also fine. I knocked back the tabs and removed the 6 flywheel bolts which required a breaker bar and a large spanner on the crankshaft bolt on the front of the engine. Off came the flywheel, then the tabs and bolts from the rear engine plate. At this point I could replace the plate gasket and the rear main oil seal (which seemed fine). I made sure to replace all the seals and gaskets I could along the way to try to prevent oil from getting back into the bellhousing and ruining the new clutch. I'm glad I got new flywheel to crankshaft bolts because one was rounded badly during removal. While putting the clutch back onto the flywheel, a bolt snapped. Luckily, it spun right out when we went at the remainder with a drill. Another problem averted! While Scott finished the engine reassembly, I replaced the front oil seal and gasket inside the transmission bell housing and fitted the new carbon release bearing. The tranny was almost totally out of oil! This was quite a shock, I had not checked the oil level recently, I just assumed it was engine oil getting on the clutch and dripping out the "cotter pin drain hole" in the botton front of the tranny. It was quite oily in the clutch area and now I'm fairly certain it was in fact coming from the tranny. We put the engine and transmission back together and called it a night (11 hours).

Sunday morning started a little later, as I felt the worst of it was over. Dropping the assembly back into the car was a lot more demanding than removal, as you have to look out for snagging on things and getting the transmission up into the tunnel. After some unsucessful configurations we learned the engine mounts had to be on the engine, not attached to the body, while lowering. Scott said goodbye when that was in (Hi Julia!) and I proceeded to bolt up the transmission and associated bits. At this point I realized what the people on the MGs list were talking about when they talked about "that *%#@* transmission crossmember". Good thing I have small fingers, it was quite contorted. If you've done this before you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes you have to wonder who designs this stuff. Hit a snag with the engine mounts, the right hand side engine mount would not line up with the holes. I had to use a big crowbar to force the engine back enough to get 3 of the 4 mount bolts in. The rubber looks extremely stretched back on that side, I need to figure out what happened there. Other than that, it was a pretty simple operation of putting everything back on (the end is near!). After refilling the oil and coolant, the car was ready to start. My mind was racing, running over checklists and hoping when it started I wouldn't hear any "bad" sounds. I was vindicated when it roared back to life and I quickly jumped out and made sure there were no major leaks. Turned on the lights and took it for a very very gentle test drive around the block. Seemed good! So I cleaned up, packed up the tools, and drove home, carefully. (8 hours)

The next weekend, I backtracked a little and removed the carbs and manifolds and replaced all the studs and washers. The hardware that was there before was a mix of studs and bolts and instead of the proper thick metal washers, someone had fitted 4 soft thin washers on each stud. I also took off the pedal box cover, after fighting with a horribly rusted metal screw, to inspect the bushings. There is a lot of slop in my pedals, so I'm going to order new bolts and bushings for those, which should make a huge difference. Then I attached the new speedo cable and went under the car to replace the clutch slave rubber boot and bleed the clutch, since I had noticed the fluid was really nasty. Next it was back to the propshaft flange, one of the bolts was getting very close to stripped when I reassembled on Sunday which made me very nervous. Unfortunately, I couldn't get enough clearance under the car to get my big 3/4" drive socket wrench to loosen the rear transmission flange and get the bolts out, so that's probably going to be a take-to-OMG job. For now they are shimmed out slightly with washers so the nuts can bite some fresh threads. Back on went the carbs and after a quick timing adjustment, carb check, and valve adjustment I was ready to pack it in. I'm comfortable taking it for a long haul now, and my test drive tonight was much more "spirited". (7 hours)

I highly recommend doing your own engine work. As long as you attack things in a methodical way, have the right parts and tools on hand, and roll with the punches it can actually be pretty fun. I'll tell you this, everything else I need to do on the car seems pretty trivial now! The results have been great. The clutch is perfect, and the oil pressure relief valve has given me an extra 10 psi oil pressure across the board (40 idle 65 at speed, engine hot). I didn't delve as deeply into the engine as I had planned, such as replacing the rod bearings and timing chain tensioner, but being able to finish the whole job in a weekend was definately a bonus (I do not have a second car). On the down side, the new speedo cable has not brought any movement to the gauge so I'm afraid there's something wrong with the drive inside the transmission. On the other hand, the car is sounding better than ever! Quite a bit more growly. I attribute it to the new manifold gasket and proper fasteners, along with the new engine and transmission rubber mounts. I wouldn't be suprised if there had been an air leak there before. Maybe I can pass emissions now...

Here's the parts I ordered for this job (Moss P/Ns). I think this is almost everything, but I didn't use some of the parts.

190-808 1 3pc borg & beck clutch kit
387-235 1 5-main clutch alignment tool
460-715 1 flywheel lockplate
322-160 6 flywheel bolts
330-420 1 spigot bushing
120-820 1 rear oil seal
291-010 1 oil pan gasket
413-020 1 lh front engine mount
413-010 1 rh front engine mount
413-050 2 rear engine mount
120-300 1 trans. front cover oil seal
296-560 1 trans. front cover gasket
220-540 1 red engine paint
324-650 1 washer, oil pressure release valve
329-210 1 spring, "
460-155 1 valve, "
460-165 1 packing, "
297-520 1 5-main gasket set
460-560 1 block, timing chain tensioner
460-580 1 gasket, "
460-570 1 locktab, "
460-520 4 lock plate, big end
425-660 1 thrust washer set, "


I also got my BMIHT Certificate in the mail a few weeks back. Rather than type it all in, here's a scan. $50 well spent! If you'd like your own, follow the BMIHT Certificate link under Registers below.