Relapse

After a grueling 34 days of withdrawal, my dad and I relapsed from our sobriety and fell back into our dirty habit: working at the garage. Having been on the wagon so long, we’re putting the pedal to the metal to try and make up for lost time. On Friday, we stopped by to clean up a little, but we didn’t have enough time to do any work on the project. The next day, we brought Ollie along to help out.

Mustang detritus

On Saturday we started by removing the oil pan; Ollie took half of the 22 bolts and I took the rest. We left two bolts screwed half-way in, on opposite corners, and then pried it loose from the block using a gasket scraper and a mallet. The oil pan was exceptionally clean, but inside we found a piece of a bearing and a few small metal scraps. Next off were the oil pump and gas pump. Then we flipped the engine over on the stand, and jammed a mallet handle in the crankshaft to keep it from turning and removed the crankshaft pulley.

Dad and Ollie longboarded over to Walgreens to grab some 2 liter soda bottle racks for the pistons. When I tried to remove the crank bolt, I kept hearing the wooden handle crunch under the pressure of the crankshaft, so I switched it out for a stronger one. After removing the crankshaft pulley, Dad attached the harmonic balancer puller. When that came off, we removed the timing chain cover. The timing chain looked like it had a little too much slack, so will probably end up replacing it. With the timing chain and gears sealed up in a gallon bag (and properly labeled), I could unscrew the cam stopper and pull out the camshaft. Unforturnately, Dad was too busy worrying that I would scratch the lobes that he didn’t think to grab the camera and get a picture (thanks Dad!). After we wrapped the cam in some clean paper and taped it up, we cleaned up and headed home.

Yesterday, Ollie and I stopped by after getting a haircut to catalogue and put away the parts from the previous day.

Until next weekend…