WITW - Ricky's van attack

[RICKY D]

Lest me get this straight, so the engine mounts have a circuit to them?

Is this normal? Why would an engine mount link to the diagnostics?

Purely for my learning

[MikkiJayne]

They are active mounts. The solenoid on the side opens up a valve to an air pocket inside the rubber. With it open the mount is softer as it just depends on the rubber. With it closed, the mount is stiffer as it also contains an air spring.

Normally the ECU will show an error code if the mounts are open circuit, but it wasn't in this case so I'll investigate that and make sure its behaving.

[RICKY D]

I’m impressed the D2 had such tech back then

I only have a plug in OBD2 reader that connects to my phone and it only shows the basic codes such as the omission of cats which triggers an EML every few hundred miles (I rarely bother clearing them anymore), however I vaguely remember my friend telling me before I had my cats removed that an engine mount was flagging up in his scanner but it wasn’t leaking...so he left it

I wonder if this was that. That was about 3 years ago at least.

[Markiii]

I was going to ask if an engine mount change was a good preventative whilst the engine was out?

But that sounds expensive

[MikkiJayne]

They are NLA so its moot unfortunately. I'll be replacing this broken one with a good used one from Prestige.

[MikkiJayne]

The gearbox oil is quite dark so I'll get as much of this out as I can, including from the converter



The centre diff oil - that's not 0.8 litres Most of it has escaped through the rear output seal.



Gearbox bare of acoutrements and on the stand ready for cleaning tomorrow

[MikkiJayne]

Nice and clean





Drain the front diff oil - as with the centre diff, most of it had already escaped.



The left side output shaft will get a new bearing and oil seal as usual



No dirt inside, just drips of dark oil



The gasket is trashed though - it was dripping oil when on its side before I even removed any of the bolts. It has been serviced before so whoever did it probably didn't quite get the bolt torques even.



The magnets are appropriately furry - nothing wrong here



The sump is nice and clean



I'll leave it with the sump off overnight for the oil to drain, then back together with new seals tomorrow, then I'll start on the engine

[MikkiJayne]

All the seals plus a bearing for the gearbox



I made a tool for the right hand output seal as this one is a pain to seat square



Seal pushed in at 6.5mm in from the flange



New seal fitted and the flange back in



The rear output shaft had the updated oil seal, but doesn't have the updated flange so this extra lip wasn't doing much good. The seal had been pushed all the way in so it would fit together. I replaced it with an original design seal.



On to the sump. After cleaning I realised that at some point in the past the bolts had been over-tightened and distorted the flange. You can just see the bump in this pic - this will damage the gasket when torqued, and won't seal between the holes



Its also been dropped I think and dinged the flange. It rocked side to side across the diagonal so was never going to seal properly



It took quite a while to hammer it all back flat, but by the time I finished it sits perfectly on the gearbox casing and doesn't rock at all

I primed the oil pump then put a new filter on, then got distracted by the barn-find FE arriving so this is as far as I got today



I'll bolt the sump on tomorrow then the gearbox is done bar filling it with fluids.

[Markiii]

hurrah getting closer

[RICKY D]

I cannot wait to be reunited