Verde Engine Rebuild Project
Week 5+
03/26/06
Well I got sidetracked by a bunch of stuff and the weather has hinted at getting nicer, hopefully the snow is gone for good now. Figured I'd better get moving if I want to drive the Verde soon...
Did bits and pieces over the past weeks, not all rebuild related!
Spent a little time cleaning the block some more:
Decided to replace the natty looking front anti-sway bar end link bushings with Performatek poly's. Had a heck of a time getting the bushings off the sway bar. Ended up using a 3 jaw puller and a utility knife to get everything but the center pressed on metal sleeve off:
Andy (at Performatek) suggested that the easiest way to get them off was to use a hack saw and carefully do a just off vertical (10 0r 15 degrees or so) cut, just enough to keep from cutting into the bar. Cut almost all the way through and then carefully go at it with a chisel or screwdriver and some pliers. Took a while, but got it off.
Here's a shot of the bushes going into the end links. Needed to use the press to get the old one out (the one's that connect to the chassis). Putting the new two piece one's in was a piece of cake.
The stock sway bars have a domed washer between the end link bush and the inner part of the bar on each side which my IAP bar didn't have. I happened to have a sway bar from a platinum parts car (see other activities below) so I put one of those on and then started hammering on the new bush. I didn't notice that the post onto which the bush goes was a fair amount shorter than the stock one so the bush wouldn't go all the way on with the washer there so I had to yank the bush off again and put it back on without the washer. Why they made the post shorter makes no sense to me, seems you'd really want a washer there, oh well.
Started looking over the crank more carefully and got scared when I noticed a rather large groove on the last piston journal that the other ones didn't have. It looked like it had been machined it and it didn't go all the way around so I sent out a question to the alfa-digest about it and was informed that a number of other alfisti had the same worry when they did there rebuilds but that they are all like that, phew!
Next I decided to press out the rear engine mount from the bell housing cover, here it is ready and waiting...
Here are the Home Depot special's that I used to help press it out, the 1.5" pipe was a perfect fit!
Here it is with the mount removed and scrubbed down with degreaser.
This is why I decided it needed replacing :-). Every bit of exterior rubber on this car....toast!
Meanwhile one of the local Milano clan, Jose, was selling his extra pair of Recaro's that were in better shape than mine so I snagged them.
I decided that I wanted to paint my cam covers and the plenum so I chose the black VHT wrinkle paint. Here they are before, degreased and with the ratty red paint sanded off the lettering with 320 grit wet/dry sandpaper.
And the final results, nice!
Heard from Jose about a Platinum that had recently been junked by an older gentleman that was complete, had just blown a head gasket and the PO didn't want to spend the money to fix it. Three of us, myself, Jose, and another local Milano guy, Russ, went in on it together. I needed to build up my stash of spare parts, Jose wanted the transaxle, and Russ needed some dash parts. The plan was to get it delivered to Jose's garage and that we would converge on the car on the weekend, strip it, and get the hulk picked up again to go back to the junkyard after the weekend. Here it is waiting to be stripped, reasonable shape but a fair amount of rust and some neglect but not too bad:
Here are Jose and Russ hard at work trying to get the rear end disconnected. There were a couple of the bolts that were rusted on so we had to resort to the die grinder and a hack saw!
We worked on it until about 1:30 AM on Sat night and from 11AM - 8PM on Sunday and were finished. I had done the same to a spider a few years ago and it reminded me that this is only something I want to do every few years! Here's a shot of my haul loaded into the back of the van:
I've been wanting to get a blast cabinet for some time now and finally took the plunge and got a decent deal on one on e-bay. It arrived quickly and I opened up the box to set it up. I found the bag of bolts/washers/nuts and realized I had my work cut out for me, look at the size of this bag!
It took a while but I got it together.
That's all for this update.