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Grand Prix Tear Down Has Begun



RooK said:
BTW, you can take the engine and tranny out as an assembly like I did. It will make it harder to attach to the engine stand (you'll need to find a place to set them down to disconnect). However, it will make getting to that one hidden bolt that holds them together in the rear a piece of cake.
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Thats the plan, pull them out together then separate. Then when the time comes, put them back together and then back into the engine bay.

You know whats funny. Looking at the thing today, there is a bolt missing that holds the engine and tranny together. I dont know if it can be seen in the pics or not, I'll have to look at that.
 
Make sure you move the fusebox, remove the master cylinder, and maybe unbolt the accumulator mount so it can me moved around. I'd also recommend unbolting the A/C compressor and leaving it in the engine bay. We could not drop the 3800 in with it attached (the 3100, being smaller, didn't have any issues). This will also have the bonus of you not having to recharge the A/C system, unless you planned on doing maintenance there anyway.
 
Everything is disassembled. There is nothing attached to the engine at the moment except the EGR. I probably need to take the hood off, but I cant do that by myself.

I even have the motor mount and tranny mount unbolted and ready to go. Literally, all that needs to be done is hook up the cherry picker and lift.
 
SyntheticShield said:
04.26.2008

Well I got 'em. The engine stands that is. The tax money ended up going for other things so I was unable to go wild with all the parts I wanted to get and will have to get them as money is available. All I need now is just a cherry picker. Everything is ready to come out.


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I think once I get the engine and tranny out and on the stands Im going to organize the garage again and then jump to the inside of the car and pull out the interior 'cause I got a few plans for stuff to go in there. I'll also jack up the rear end and put it on stands and start assembling the stuff I need to to the ss fuel lines and try and do a write up on that and on replacing the heater core.

Stay tuned, more to come.
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man, what you do is up to you, but i dont know that i'd be doing the engine/trans AND interior at the same time... that's gonna be a crazy amount of stuff to keep straight. obviously, if youve got some downtime while waiting for parts, etc for the engine/trans, then it may not be so bad, but eek, you're gonna be drowning in parts! heh
 
I considered that and will sectionalize things to keep them in order, plus Im pretty good with organization and such. The engine and trans will take the longest so I wont start on those until I have all the parts I need. I'll tear into the trans once I have everything for it, then the engine and so on. The interior work will not be all that much anyway. I want to do something with breaking up the color of all the tan mostly and wire in a few things.
 


Good news. I found a place locally that will rent out cherry pickers for $24/day. Which it would take no more than a couple hours at best to get everything out and on the engine stands. Its just sitting on the transmission and lower motor mount as it is.

How hard is it to separate the engine from the transmission? My understanding was just unbolt the bell housing, take out the flex plate bolts and slide them apart. Is that how it goes or is there more I need to know. If I have all the information I need then I may go rent one this afternoon and get that knocked out.
 
Just make sure you pull the TC bolts out of the flex plate or you will make a huge mess of trans oil. In other words keep the TC with the trans. Pull the bolts out of the bell housing and that should be it.
 
Take the TC cover off, remove the TC to flexplate bolts.
Unbolt the tranny to engine bracket.
Unbolt the bell housing.
 
Well it did not go as planned. I got off work, my boss (who lives just a few blocks from me) brought his truck over and we went to get the cherry picker. After having called them and made sure they had one in stock and that they were open 'til 5:30pm, we pull up to the rental place only to find a note in the window "We closed at 2:00pm today instead of our normal 5:30pm.

PO'd does not even come close to describing what I am at that moment. TurboKent is on his way up from Tulsa, about 55 - 60 miles one way to help me pull out the engine and tranny. The only other rental place around closed at 5pm.

I called a couple local parts stores, they have cherry pickers in stock at $200 a pop and do not rent them. They rent everything else under the sun, why not cherry pickers?!!?!?

Well Kent gets to my place and all we were able to get done on my car is pull the hood off. So I guess I'll have to try next week unless I can get a cherry picker tomorrow and turn it back in Saturday and avoid paying for the whole weekend.

My apologies to you Kent for that long drive and not getting accomplished what we set out to do. I assure you the rental place is going feel some of the wrath I wanted to dish out today.
 


I sure would like to. But I still need to rent the lift from them. So I will probably let them know what I think about the whole ordeal, but I'll have to figure out how to be a little sophisticated with it, I was NOT a happy camper.

I called them today and they will be open tomorrow and if I rent the lift then I get Sunday free and just take it back on Monday. I hate to be a jerk about it with them, but they could have just told me they were going to close early that way I could have saved TurboKent the trip.
 
05.03.2008

Well its done, engine and tranny are out of the car and on stands. Let the rebuild begin. I'll be starting with the transmission since its obviously broke and I'll save the engine for last since I need to finalize what all I am going to do to that.

I got to get the garage cleaned up and organized so I can work on the thing. Im running out of room to put everything, LOL

I tell ya, I was some kind of nervous about the whole process. Lifting that much weight out I was super cautious. Though I bought chain and other items rated well beyond the weight of the two it was still nerve racking for me. But its done thank God.

Here are some pics I took.


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This was probably the most nerve racking part here. Both the engine and tranny hanging and swinging off the end of that cherry picker. One thought was it will be okay, the next thought was well if it breaks and falls off, guess I wont be doing a rebuild, just by a new engine and tranny and call it good.

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Got the engine and tranny separated. Wasnt as bad as I thought it would be. I may become a mechanic after all..

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Here is the engine being fitted to the engine stand.

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I had intended to stop at this point and just mount up the transmission tomorrow, but things were going fairly well so I decided to go ahead an knock it out.

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I guess it wasnt so bad of an ordeal. Now I gotta get busy rebuilding this stuff. Hopefully I can have it all done by the time the Branson meet is here.
 


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