Since Rob the Elder has a very nice thread for his very awesome car, and I keep posting pics of ongoing body work and engine replacements, I thought I'd start my own thread just to keep things organized.
Hey, all the cool kids are doing it.
So, some body work pics:
And, now: SHINEY!
Still a lot of work to do. I need to let the paint settle for a day (really, 6-10 hours, but I'm beat so it'll be longer), sand it with 1500, more clear, etc.
But, it's really coming together. Certainly much better than the hail damaged, primer gray mess it's been for the past year.'
Still have to paint Norm's GXP sideskirts and get those mounted - project for another weekend.
Updated to use non-Australian pics provided by Rob.
Thank you! Not too bad for a home grown paint job. Of course, I just chipped the leading edge of a door thanks to a misaligned fender.
Looks black in the pics, but it's really dark blue. (GM 2:025 Ming Blue). I didn't want to paint the door jambs, and that's the original color. It's been so long since the storm, I about had to check old pictures to be sure. :/
And, I LOVE Norm's fenders and bumper. We'll get the side skirts on in a few weeks, after the wife forgives me for spending 200 hours on this.
Headlights are a work in progress.
2 / 3 devices are showing pictures upside down on the forum. Even if I flip them over in Photoshop before uploading. WTF.
I hear ya. I have spent way too much time out in the shop but the little woman loves to ride with the top down, so I get a little slack. ? I just replaced my headlights too. Buy the full kit, it is worth it.
And, driving back from our shop in Oklahoma to Dallas, the temp suddenly jumped from 198 to 290F in under a second. I shut it down immediately and got a tow. Empty reservoir, coolant all over the bottom of the car. Oil looks and smells fine on the stick. Still have to drain it while rubbing blue mud in my belly button and chanting for no chocolate milk.
I suspect something punctured the radiator or the oh-so-easy-to-replace lower hose. There aren't a lot of other coolant exit routes, and the engine doesn't look wet.
While waiting on the tow truck - AAA sucks - the temp dropped down to 105, so I (perhaps unwisely) started it and got it farther away from traffic. (Freeway shoulder). Seemed to be fine for the 30 seconds it was running.
I'm hoping this doesn't mean engine #5. Definitely have to check head stud torque and compression.
I think I'll go ahead and change it. Holding tool and the pump can be had for about $70 off of Amazon. (Hooray, free Prime shipping.) I've had a new temp sensor sitting on the shelf for a few weeks due to intermittent "---" readings on the cluster. That should've told me the pump was having issues.
This begs the question, though: where does the coolant go? It's all over the bottom of the car. How does it escape? Is there some sort of pressure relief somewhere (other than the reservoir overflow drain tube)?
I fired up the car for a minute this morning and it *seemed* fine. Vacuum was a little low (according to my boost gauge), but that's always been the case until the engine gets warm. Of course, I'm not going to let the engine get warm until the rest of this is fixed.
And, this gives me a chance to replace the leaking oil return gasket. I don't see how it's possible to get the pump and sundries out without removing the exhaust manifold. That is a huge pain with the turbo attached, and removing the turbo pretty much requires separating the turbine and compressor.
Time to start gathering buckets, drain pans and old cardboard boxes.
Raygun, sound like a rough day on the road. I agree AAA sucks...I had to do a tow due to a break line recently....waited for hours. Hope you finally made it home safe
The water pump failure mechanism is a strange one on these cars. Its typical to get a low coolant light on the dash and see NO sign of leakage. You add a little coolant to the overflow bottle and it will go for days or even weeks with no issues. Then the low coolant light may show again, repeat the cycle. Look under the car, no coolant on the ground. Scratch head. Drive it one day and it pukes out half the coolant and you are dead along side the road.
There is a lengthy thread where the pump failure mechanism is discussed at length with no good final conclusion that I am buying into. But my best guess is the seal goes into an intermittent failure mode. It seals when cold, then when hot it leaks a little or a lot but when you shut the car off in the garage, the pressure drops and there is no piddling under the car. You drive it and it may or may not exhibit symptoms for days or even weeks!
Then you back it out of the garage and it pukes all over the driveway and nothing will stop the flood. Or as in your case, you are driving along moderately and it just decides "I'm going to empty my guts right now!" and does so.
With the tool to hold the timing chain and about 8 hours you too can replace the water pump. I have done it and had a good outcome. Doing it the first time is a BITCH. Getting the tool installed is simple but nerve wracking because of the negative consequences of doing it poorly. I've done it twice and it worked as designed both times. I am still nervous about screwing it up but will do it again any time.
The turbo is exactly in the way of accessing the bolts for the water pipe and the pump. We did NOT choose to pull the turbo because we would rather spend another couple of hours rather than potentially inducing yet more problems with the turbo that could result from pulling it out of the car.
The top, rear mounting bolt for the water pipe took us an hour to figure out how to get a wrench on it and then get it off. Maybe you can do better. It WILL come off but its very awkward to access.
Best of luck! May all your coolant be happy water.:lurk:
The water pump failure mechanism is a strange one on these cars. Its typical to get a low coolant light on the dash and see NO sign of leakage. You add a little coolant to the overflow bottle and it will go for days or even weeks with no issues. Then the low coolant light may show again, repeat the cycle. Look under the car, no coolant on the ground. Scratch head. Drive it one day and it pukes out half the coolant and you are dead along side the road.
Funny thing is: I checked coolant and oil levels before starting the trip. Coolant level was exactly where it's been since I changed it about 3000 miles ago. It's strange (to me), but not impossible (I guess) that the pump would fail so catastrophically all at once. I've not had the yellow coolant light, or the red temp light, come on until this happened.
Second funny thing: when I removed the reservoir cap this morning - before starting the engine, so it was nice and cold having sat all night - there was significant air pressure. Enough that it pushed my hand away and popped when the threads were clear. On the one hand, that can be good since it implies an airtight system. On the other hand - WTF?!
The coolant appears to have all exited via the overflow tube. I can see some of it below the reservoir, on the rubber/plastic piece behind/under/adjacent-to the wheel well liner. A cursory examination of the visible edge of the head gasket with a great flashlight and a mirror-on-a-stick revealed no moisture of any kind (odd in and of itself because it's been raining). Upper/lower radiator hoses, heater core hoses and not-cheap aluminum radiator all look good.
I went ahead and ordered the Delco water pump, thermostat & OTC gear holding tool. The Delco pump was about $100 on Amazon - 3x what a Dorman pump costs - but, if I'm going to spend an entire day pulling this thing apart and putting it back together, the extra $70 is noise.
If I hadn't just (mostly) finished painting it, I'd probably just set it on fire. If the engine is toast, I'm installing an LS.
This is how rubber pieces fall apart: the car spends so much time sitting on jack stands between drives that everything disintegrates.
I have not heard of a car pumping coolant out the overflow before. When the water pump fails catastrophically it comes out of the pump. Do you have an air lift tool to fill? It can pull a vacuum and perhaps that will tell you something.
Is it normal for the reservoir to be pressurized? Or under vacuum? Or good 'ol 1 bar at sea level? The cap was pretty hard to remove.
There is now some - maybe 0.5-0.75" - coolant in the reservoir, so it's not completely dry.
The square hole on top of the pump housing is bone dry. Even had a small leaf in it. Isn't that the typical escape route?
I'm hoping to tear it open this weekend if the weather cooperates. Got a Delco pump, thermostat and holding tool on a UPS truck somewhere with my name on it.
Head gasket is toast. Found a leak where the upper hose connects to the radiator, which is apparently where some of the coolant went.
I got it up to temp - ran fine, though compression on #1 and #2 are a little low (~120psi, was 150 the last time I checked. But, during the compression test, it started blowing steam out of the spark plug holes.
Water pump is working, though. I'm at a loss for what happened here.
I'm not sure what I'll be doing next weekend. Either pulling the head off, or setting the car on fire.
One nice thing about working from home is that I have a certain degree of flexibility when deciding how to spend my lunch break on the rare occasion that I remember to take said break.
Today, I removed the exhaust manifold, turbo and sundry bits. This is usually a painful process since the turbo and manifold do not want to come out as a unit - it's a pretty tight fit between the engine, exhaust studs and frame.
So, this time, I just removed the exhaust studs - not just the nuts, but the studs as well - and the whole thing lifted right out. Nifty! This reduced the exhaust manifold / turbo / cat removal time to about 45 minutes, including time to jack the car, remove the wheel well liner, etc.
Tomorrow I'll get the intake side taken apart. The couple of "recommended" special tools for holding the timing chain, cam gears, etc. should be here by Wednesday. I'm still deciding on a replacement head gasket. I had the Werks MLS gasket - not sure who makes it - but I'd like to try something different. DDM has the Cometic MLS gasket, which looks great - certainly the price is right - but there's a note on their site about having to modify the head in order for VVT to work correctly. Waiting on a response from them about what exactly is required.
If all goes well, I should have this thing back up and running this weekend. Assuming I can find a shop in the area that can inspect and/or resurface the head quickly.
And, on the positive side: I can now easily get to and replace the water pump. :laugh:
Since the weather was nice this morning, I decided to remove the intake side of things before starting "real work." I gave myself an hour, and got the coolant drained, intake manifold removed, harness disconnected, fuel rail pulled (though that could've stayed in the head), and most everything else that was in the way.
I may remove the windshield cowl just to get some more room to lift the head. That thing is not light weight. and with the ARP studs it's going to have to come straight up quite a ways. This is one of those times when having the wheel well liners off the car really helps, since you can straddle the control arm and stand right next to the engine - unless you're taller than me (5'9) and tend to whack your head on the hood.
Head comes off tomorrow.
Before:
For those that haven't done this before: I find it easiest to pull the fuel rail, injectors and injector harness as a unit. Disconnecting the MAP sensor takes a little bit of creativity, but it's better than removing & reinstalling all of those funky injector retainer clips that tend to go flying.
So, after a couple of days stuck doing real life stuff, I got back to it this morning and finally removed the head.
A couple of observations:
If you have ARP studs, you're better off removing the stud through the top of the head rather than trying to lift the head over the studs. The back of the head will hit the cowl before it clears the studs. You can remove four of the 7mm screws that hold the cowl in place, which will give it enough flex to clear the head. However, if, like me, you're using the EN-48749 tool ($$$) to hold the timing chain up in hopes of not having to take the front engine cover off to reseat the timing chain, you'll find that the head won't clear the LH fixed timing chain guide. If you remove the upper guide bolt, the chain will slip, and you'll have to take the front cover off. With the studs removed, you have a lot more flexibility to maneuver the head around the guide. (Of course, this conveniently ignores the fact that the guide is bolted into the head. I tried the rubber band trick to hold the guides together - no bueno.)
Or, you can just saw "screw it," drop the chain, and prepare to remove the front cover. It's not that bad of a process, but it takes some time.
On to the fun part:
As far as I can tell, the head gasket is just fine. I see no cracks in the cylinders or the head. The only thing I found was that the RH stud between the #1 and #2 cylinders was loose. I tightened the nuts before going through this debacle, but I didn't tighten the studs. Now, I wouldn't expect that to be a problem - the ARP studs aren't supposed to be super-tight in the block anyway - but that was the only one that was loose, and (I think) that's where the leak was.
Monday, I'm taking the head over to the machine shop to be inspected and pressure tested.
I need an app to keep track of how much time I spend driving this car vs working on it.
If you have ARP studs, you're better off removing the stud through the top of the head rather than trying to lift the head over the studs. The back of the head will hit the cowl before it clears the studs.
After you removed the head, I take it from the photo that you have replaced the ARP studs into the block? ...... in prep for when you put the head gasket and the head back on the block? Correct? :wink:
This is the over-priced GM timing chain holding tool. It didn't hold the chain well when I pulled the head. Ultimately, I had to remove the crank pulley and timing chain cover, which isn't that bad when you already have the radiator out and the belts off. (BTW, taking the belts off takes about 5 minutes. If a shop tells you different, they are smoking crack. You don't even have to take any bolts out.)
The two yellow wedge-looking things each have a threaded hole, and a wire handle. You thread the rod into the hole, then jam it between the timing chain and the fixed guide. The ridges on the yellow part stick between links in the same way that gear teeth do. You then remove the threaded rod, install the other one (one for the intake side, one for exhaust) in the same way.
If you do all of that right, the chain won't come off of the crank gear when you remove the cam gears. The manual says to put a heavy rubber band around the two upper guides so that you can remove the LH fixed guide upper bolt, so that guide can move in towards the center of the engine, allowing the head to come off. In my case, the tools slipped and I just went ahead and took the timing cover off to re-time the thing.
See the second picture in the previous post, which shows them installed when looking through the head opening.
I finally got the head back on, and did a (cold) compression test. It's definitely up from where it was before, and the coolant system holds pressure quite nicely. I still need to get the turbo and manifolds reinstalled sometime this week.
Oh, and reasons to put the timing chain cover on LAST: I dropped a socket down the front, and it made it all the way down to the crank gear, under the chain. I had to pull the cover back off in order to retrieve it.
Also, don't forget to install the front four head bolts before you put the timing chain and cam actuators (aka, gears) back on. The LH fixed guide blocks access to the bolt hole.
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