Engine out, and a bit of good news!

Good blog to you, fellow bloggers. I hope this blog finds you well, and that you've had a good blog this blog. (Is that the correct etiquette? who knows... or cares...)

So just a quick update this evening on progress. Firstly - the engine and gearbox are now out of the donor car. And secondly, and perhaps more exciting; Peter at GKD has sent me a message to inform me that the chassis is ready for collection this week! Hurrah!

So, engine story first:

After spending all of Saturday on it, and Monday/Tuesday evening, the engine and box are seperated from the vehicle. It wasn't too bad a job in the end, just time consuming. Perhaps the worst was removing the inlet manifold - just when you think it's disconnected there's another pesky hose jubilee clipped to it, or an electrical connector, or a hidden bracket, or... well, you get the idea. German over-engineering at its finest if you ask me, but hey ho learned a lesson there. Or I will when I have to try and put it back together!

Wiring harness then followed suit. Copius amounts of tape, marker pen; and being slow and methodical is my cunning plan to ensure everything ends up back where it should be.

Wiring harness, intake manifold, plastic engine covers:

Next was the exhaust which came off reasonably well, but is HUGE and VERY HEAVY. (for that read "ouch, my chest") Note the blue side skirts on the left of the picture which are themselves, length of the wheelbase of the car, added for size comparison to the massive exhaust:

 Next was the propshaft which was an utter pain the proverbial because the splines had rusted up so it wouldn't withdraw- I'd planned to leave it inplace until the diff was ready to come off, but in the end because I couldn't retract it from the output shaft of the gearbox, had to undo every bolt fore, aft, centre bearing and cross brace. But it's now off.

Next was the V belt and PAS pump, fairly straightforward.

Then finally to the gearshift lever - couldn't undo the plastic bushing (special BMW tool which I didn't have), and the bentley manual said the shift "console" would pop off the gearbox with a split pin. Well, I'm b*****red if I could see the split pin, much less get to it with the gearbox still in the car so I ended up just undoing the gear linkage to the box so the shift lever went slack, and running a grinder down the casing of the metalastic bush to free the box from the car. Really and truly, that was the only difficulty, the whole process was actually quite straightforward.

After that it was 4 bolts on the gearbox and 2 on the engine, and it quite literally just leaped out by itself!!

I'll let the pics tell the rest (apologies for the glare, apparently fluroescent lighting and iPhone cameras don't get on, must take my camera up for evening shots). The pictures are a bit grainy in preview, click on them and better quality images will pop up.

jacking up ready for underneath work:

step 1 position engine crane

release gearbox, pump on engine crane, hope nothing's still connected

step 3, sit in driver's seat, chuckle as to the view you'd see if you were driving along the road and your engine tries to leap out

 

Nearly out

actually out

Wheel away triumphantly

Gearshift console bush that
wouldn't quite let go, but  eventually persuaded to with air-powered mini angle grinder: (gearshifter has got the blue tape on which held on a chavved up gearknob with 6 LED lights. mmh, snazzy)

Final pic of the car as it is now. I'd love to put the bonnet and grille back on, and then call AA "homestart" and see how long it takes them to diagnose the problem of "my car won't start"...

And finally the other news - chassis ready to collect. Hurrah. Need to figure out precisely how I'm going to do that, my own trailer isn't really big enough or robust enough for the task; but I'm sure I'll figure it out...

Steve