I am in no-wise a motor mechanic or claim to be. My knowledge of cars is very, very basic but I'm all for giving it a good go before I pay someone to do it for me. So here we go...
Day 1 of giving this overhaul a try and I'm already over it! lol
Hoisted the car and placed safely on jacks. Removed tires and tried cracking the caliper bolts but couldn't do it.
Time for a snack.
Removed air intake and pipe(s) to radiator. Removed resevoir and radiator caps and bottom hose. Drained the coolant. Disconnected bottom cabling and removed radiator/fan.
In the pic, it shows the engine bay without the radiator. Question: Whats that long skinny grey pipe from the front of the car leading down past the turbo? Is it to do with Air Con or something? Can I take it off? Im thinking that it'll get in the way once I do the turbo swap.
Went back to brakes. Generous application of penetrating spray. Still no good. Another snack.
Question: Its still 'lefty loosey - righty tighty' for these caliper bolts yeah? Just making sure. I'll get a longer breaker bar tomorrow and tackle it again.
Back to the engine bay. Removed all associated bolts to the rocker cover as per instructions found on this forum. Removed wires but couldn't get the plugs out coz they wouldn't stick to the socket I was using. I just couldn't be bothered so they stayed in. As per instructions from this forum I used a long flat screw driver to pry the rocker arm up but it felt a bit tight? I didn't want to over do it so I didn't go any further with it. I also found that with the rocker arms closest to the cam gears they wouldn't lift up at all, so I wanted to know if anyone has any tips on trying to get to the lifters from this point on. I'm thinking that I need to just undo the rocker arms altogether from the cams so its easy access to the lifters? Any help on this would be cool coz I'm not sure where to go from here.
Next was undoing the manifold. Seemed to go ok with again, generous amounts of penetrating spray but the end washer is wedged between the actual bolt its on and I think it was part of the engine mount or something thats just beneath the cam gears? So basically all the bolts are undone, but when I try to take it off, the washer keeps wedging itself preventing me from pulling it away fully. I did actually push the turbo down a bit to make some room, and it did, but then I thought that was probably not a good idea..lol
So any ideas on getting this thing off? I'm thinking grind off the washer? but I will wait for further instructions lol
Well, that's all I cared to do today. To be honest it felt good to get in there and give it a go but Im looking forward to seeing if you guys can give me a hand.
...by the way, TD05 hasn't arrived yet. Hopefully in the next couple of days..
Edited by QUKNEZ, 26 August 2014 - 11:15 AM.