1985-1998 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Dana - -
Not a lot of fun but surprisingly doable without jacking car on that side. Of course, I only removed one line.
Kind of in order:
1. Remove battery from car. (Mine needed a charge but it makes more room so I'd do it anyway.)
2. Pull the round clip on the black plastic curved elbow for the throttle cable, at the metal bracket to throttle body. This lets the cable pull out a bit and hang loose, so while leaning over the engine you don't press your gut down and crack the throttle cable where it threads into said elbow. I DID crack it, and it really doesn't make a difference, still works fine, but I was kind of proud of this car as it wasn't busted. Oh, also pull the PVC two-line fitting out of the valve cover, it gets leaned on some too and I kind of busted up the rubber bushing in the valve cover.
3. Remove two fat vacuum lines from manifold, one with fat nut and the one that clips on with two white nylon prongs and then pulls straight back off. This lets you get your left arm down in.
4. Crumple in on itself the driver-side one of the two rubber boots with flapper door that drains the heater-AC box. It's very flexy and squeezed in it comes right out of its hole. Lets you reach the wrench and swing it.
5. Take a pair of diagonal cutting pliers and, reaching down while shining a light, nip the massive zip tie that holds the line in question, which is the return to reservoir from rack, onto the bundle of smaller lines, kind of a little to driver's side of center of car.
6. Either nip or trig free the zip ties that hold the said line's hose to the bundle of nylon hoses, window wash plus vacuum canister lines, just near RH end of block, and also the longer zip tie that hangs the hose off the dogbone motor mount, next to the other.
7. Have a 16mm or 5/8" SAE flare nut wrench. On one of the two cars the standard 6-point flare wrench wouldn't fit the nut with any room to swing it so I had to buy a cheap combo wrench and then use my cutoff wheel on an air grinder to cut out a section wide enough to use its 12-point box end as a flare wrench.
8. With a big sheet of cardboard laid over the motor, I laid face down on top of it, and with a bright flashlight shining just between the heater hoses and the ABS pump motor, it lighted up the line perfectly. (It's the big line on top on driver side of things.) Then I reached left arm down into the gap behind motor, fiddled with wrench to get it on the flare nut, and pushed down to crack it free. On one car I had to clamp vise grips onto the open end of the wrench to increase leverage. Once free, the nut turned pretty freely. I used a 17mm open end wrench to get it off then, a flat at a time, about 30 sets of the wrench. (Looser fit made it easier to set the wrehch.) Once nut is out of steering rack, you still have to wiggle and tug straight out on the line as its spigot end is kind of inserted up in a snug bore. Location, angle, and presence of other lines into the rack limit the angle you can turn the nut per set of wrench.
Then, also after first of all having loosened hose clamp on back of PS pump and pushed the fatter feed line from reservoir off, which massively flows fluid, I was able to just pull and snake hoses out zip tied to each other and still attached to the reservoir. That, by the way, just wiggles and pulls straight up off a little bracket on the sidewall.
On one car, I could turn the flare nut part of the way off once I wrenched on it for a bit, using my fingers in nitrile gloves. The other car had pretty heavy rust on the line that made nut turn less freely. No oil can near or that might have been easier.
There's a small o-ring on the spigot end that goes into the rack. Seemed a little flattened down but I left it and no leaks. On the PS pump, there's a similar flare fitting, carrying pressurized oil to the rack, and that one has a special green o-ring, which was still in fine shape, not flattened at all.
As to the other lines to the rack, most are part of the rack itself and the other big one is the pressure line from the pump. I think it was below the one I removed, and I didn't study how to get it out as I didn't need to. Maybe peering down in you can see the lay of things and try a wrench in there.
posted by 71.173.70...
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