Date:         Thu, 04 Jul 1996 12:30:52 -0600
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Dieter Dworkin Muller <dworkin@village.org>
Subject:      Gerbil engine replacement, part I


Our story so far:

After five years of making a misadjusted valve noise that couldn't be
adjusted out, the Gerbil ('66 camper with a '71 engine of unknown
parentage) ate a piston (see
http://www.village.org/villagers/dworkin/gerbil.html; eventually the
full story with pictures, right now it's just some shots of the
piston).  Rebuilding from scratch was deemed impractical due to time
constraints, so a long block from Scat was ordered.

Today's episode:

The engine, exhaust, etc came in from Scat on Tuesday.  It being a
short week and all, I decided to wait until today to actually start on
getting it installed in the Gerbil.

The first job was to figure out what all needs to be saved off of the
old engine.  It looks like the answer is:

- distributor and mounting bracket
- fuel pump, drive rod, and mounting adaptor
- generator and generator stand (includes oil filler)
- cooling tin
- pulley

I haven't gotten the new engine out of its box yet, so I don't know if
the old woodruff key for the pulley is needed or not.  I'm hoping not,
as the old one is really happy where it is.

After removing all of the above from the old engine, on a whim I
decided to pull off the oil pump cover to see how bad things looked in
there.  The answer wasn't quite as bad as I'd feared (there are still
oil pump gears), but it's not good either.  There were lots of metal
sparkles on the inside of the cover, and on the surface that it mates
up against.  Assuming the case is still good, it's going to take a lot
of cleaning to get all the metal flakes out before it can be used.

Clean-up hint of the day:  Latex medical exam gloves and a lab coat.

Pulley removal HotD: A brake drum puller can be used as a pulley puller.
This is done in a few steps:

- Remove the bolt that holds the pulley in place.  It turns to the
  left (a flywheel lock makes this much easier).
- Take two arms of the puller and insert them through the holes in the
  pulley (don't attach them to the rest of the puller assembly).  Use
  them to lever the pulley out as far as possible.  Eventually, they'll
  hit up against pulley, and will thus cease to have any useful
  effect.
- Remove the puller arms and the flywheel lock, if you put it on to
  remove the pulley bolt earlier.
- Rotate the pulley so that one of the holes is just to the right of
  straight up.
* Put one of the puller arms into the upper pulley hole.
- Place a standard screwdriver between the head of the puller arm and
  the engine case (this is between the pulley and the case, you have
  to look in from the side to see what you're doing).
- Pull up on the puller arm, to place tension on the screwdriver.
  This may not be enough to keep the screwdriver in place without
  leaning it against your arm.  If it needs to lean, let it go against
  your upper arm, and reach down with that hand to hold the puller
  arm.
- With your other hand, use a hammer to beat on the free end of the
  puller arm.  Stop when it binds up.
- Remove puller arm and screwdriver.
- Rotate engine one-half turn, so that the other pulley hole is now
  just to the right of straight up.
- Repeat from * until no further progress is being made.
- The pulley should be far enough out now that you can (with a bit of
  effort) put the puller arms into the pulley holes and assemble the
  puller.  I had to use the holes nearest the pulley to get this to
  work, with a bit of encouragement from the hammer applied to the
  bolts that hold the puller together.
- Operate the puller as normal.
- Be careful when disassembling the pulley/puller combination, so you
  don't drop heavy bits on your feet.