Long time no update here. The car had been sitting for about a year in my garage, and I have been on the road pretty much constantly for work and stuff. Makes it hard to commit to a full weekend of car work sometimes, especially with family and such as well.
But I digress.
I have been gathering parts for awhile now and last weekend everything lined up. I had a good block and head ready to go, the shims, all my gaskets/seals/consumables, and a coworker agreed to let me use his lift.
Derrick was also free this weekend, so he came up the mountain with his knowledge and tools and we knocked it out.
Friday evening was motor assembly. Got the old motor cleaned up, block shimmed, checked out, and then fully assembled in my garage.
Saturday morning, my coworker shows up with his truck and trailer, and we got everything loaded up and over to his shop. By noon, the old motor was out of the car.
We actually made really good time through most of the day Saturday. The accessories came off the old motor and got swapped over, transmission came off, clutch and flywheel came off and got swapped over too. I didn't surface the flywheel or replace the clutch since all that really only has like 20k miles on it, and it looked fine. I did go ahead and replace the slave cylinder though.
Everything was gravy until we went to put the rear main in so we could re-mate the engine and trans. Apparently there's a new style of seal that is very thin rubber and doesn't have a spring on the sealing lip. Derrick kinda groaned when that came out of the box and goes "man these are hard to install and I've had a few leak" but we tried it anyway.
Of course it messed up. The lip got pinched and we couldn't save it. Derrick also noticed a broken exhaust stud in the replacement head at this point that both us and the machine shop had missed. Luckily, that came out super easy with a nut welded on, even though the stud broke down in the hole.
Unfortunately, it was now Saturday afternoon at 3pm. I'm 2 hours from the closest dealer, and no parts stores around me had a seal in stock.
I called up my buddy Luke in Knoxville, and luckily he said a friend of his had one and he offered to bring it about halfway and meet us at the Tail of the Dragon.
Derrick and I hopped in the Togue Limo 960 and headed that way, having some much needed fun and laughs along the way. By the time we got back with the new seal, it was 9pm and we were both beat anyhow.
We started about 9am on Sunday and got the trans and engine mated back together and installed on the subframe.
After that, the wiring harness, turbo, and heater/radiator hoses went back on.
By lunchtime, we were ready to drop the car back onto the subframe. A little drama ensued with the steering shaft alignment (foreshadowing here), but it went in without too much cussing.
Once that's all back together, we hooked the power steering and AC lines back up, among other things. Shifter cables went back on and the clutch line got reconnected and bled. That's when things got weird.
When I pressed the clutch pedal, I could feel it rubbing something and the steering wheel would move. Du hwhat?
Derrick got up under the dash and realized that the aluminum steering shaft had gotten bent. We suspect this happened because the wheel was all the way extended when we dropped the subframe, and probably the weight and angle of the subframe tweaked it during engine removal.
We managed to straighten it enough to make the car steerable again and then finished bleeding the clutch. Luke luckily has a replacement shaft from a parts car too, so that works out.
Once that was sorted, we were able to drop the car back down, Derrick packed up and hit the road home, and my coworker and I got the car loaded back on the trailer and unloaded at my house.
All the stuff that requires a lift is now done. It's really just a matter of filling up fluids, plugging some stuff back in, fixing the steering shaft, and crossing my fingers that everything's good, and cranking it. Hopefully nothing else but the tires went bad from sitting. I'm sure there will be some nagging issues to handle, but the lion's share of the repairs are done I hope.