1979-1993 & 94 Conv [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Glad you didn't run into to something unsolvable. Very sorry about that wasted time. How about this waste: replacing a dead 82 8V engine with a 88 16V that was choice #3 from a scrapyard because I missed being able to pull engine #'s 1 and 2 by one day! One day they were there, the next day they were gone. I had no choice but to take that 88 engine with over 175K miles on it since I had the truck, the help and only a small window of time in which to do the deed. Spent 4 days (16 hours a day) sweating away putting that 16V into my 82 chassis. It started with some difficulty in a cloud of thick blue smoke. That explained why the oil in the crank was so thick - the previous owner obviously attempted to keep his dying engine running. Whether it was a blown piston ring, bad valve seals or something worse, I had to accept that I had a bad engine. It took another week of work to find another engine (a good one this time), pull that one from a donor car, plus yanking the bad one out of the car and swapping with the good one. Add all the trips, car and truck rentals, plus paying for the space to do replacement #2, and it was one intense, costly, exhausting effort. Still saved money in the long run if you consider the cost of buying either another used car or a new one.
I swear I came within a nat's eyelash from junking my car. It was day number 4 when I managed to start the car to see the smoke billowing from the tailpipe. I came up with all kinds of excuses for why that was happening, thinking it would clear up after an oil change and driving it for a good distance. The realistic side of me was saying it was a dead engine and I had just wasted a lot time and effort. The moment when reality hit and I seriously considered junking the car was after that initial start-up, the engine switched off and I was underneath the car hooking up the shift rod coupling to the tranny rod. I was disheartened to see that the coupling section (which includes the rubber absorber) was too short, which meant I would have to swap couplings between the two engines - one from the old engine sitting next to the car, and the one currently in the car. I knew what I was in for - a difficult time removing that infamous taper pin from the coupling on the car. Sure enough, no amount of banging with a hammer or a punch would move it. It was at that point I stopped, got out from underneath the car, cursed it and said outloud, "You're history." For several hours afterward I resigned myself to the idea that I was actually junking my car. Then I got online and did a search on taper pin removal and read about the vice grip plier/nut method. End of the story is that I was able to remove the stuck taper pin from the car's tranny rod by using that Saabnet BB recommended method and swap the coupling pieces. Solving that little problem somehow gave me the encouragement to keep the car and try again with a different engine.
posted by 149.174.16...
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