Some 'interesting' discoveries today, including two new contenders for the worst D2 bodge of all time. The guy who maintained this had a pathological inability to do anything properly.
There are two types of bolts holding the subframe to the car - different front to back. The left hand bracket has a front bolt in it, the right hand bracket has the correct rear bolt. He couldn't even get these right.
Oil all over the cats. No wonder it smoked like a high school disco!
Engine out
The crud is half an inch deep on the subframe, but at least it's not rusted out
I couldn't get the right hand shaft off as five of the six bolts were so tight they broke a spline key trying to undo them. The sixth of course was finger-tight. I left it and figured I'd get the impact wrench on it instead - no bueno with that as it just shredded another spline tool
I thought I'd try some heat on the bolt heads. That didn't go well as I was instantly rewarded with a small fireball when all the oil ignited! Possibly I should have cleaned it first
Never mind - the fire extinguisher is always close by
This worked in the end, without catching fire or breaking anything
A big pile of bits!
The cretin hadn't bothered refitting the thermal protection on the wiring harness when he replaced the engine so the sleeving is a tad crispy here and just crumbled apart. I'll fix that later.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Sure?
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Why is the gearbox oil the wrong colour?
Because it's hypoid diff oil
In the gearbox
Just... what? This gearbox was rebuilt 20K miles ago, and the idiot refilled it with diff oil, not ATF. I guess here endeth the discussion about these gearboxes being picky about what oil they run on
20K on diff oil without exploding is pretty impressive tbh. I'll clean out as much of this as I can, and probably get the converter rebuilt to clean that out, and then refill with Mannol AG52. I'll run it around for a while to thoroughly mix with any remaining diff oil, and then change the oil again. This should sufficiently dilute any contamination such that it is insignificant. Luckily the Mannol is cheap, assuming I can get any from Germany...
Time to lift the engine and box off the subframe, except the lifting eye is missing. No matter. I have a spare.
Once the subframe was moved out of the way I removed the engine mounts to put it on the separating machine, and wondered why one of the bolts was finger tight. Oh look. He cross threaded an engine mount bolt, stripped the thread and broke the block
Nothing is surprising me by this point. I'll get a better look at this when the engine is on the stand. Its likely it can be helicoiled.
This bolt, along with many others is a; mangled, and b; in the wrong place. After spending 5 minutes carefully cleaning it and contriving an allen key to get it out, I discovered it was only finger-tight. The bolt which should go here is missing completely, and there's a hole underneath where this bolt used to be.
Finally on the separating machine
There is a silver lining to all this, which is that this is my car which I bought for scrap money, and not one of your cars which you had thought was being maintained properly! I would not want to have had this conversation with any of you guys!
Its all fixable, I have parts, I'll just crack on with it and it'll be glorious again
Oh, and the PO is not having it back, ever!