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As some of you may or may not know I am doing a turbo upgrade and doing the work myself. I am by no means a hardcore wrencher. I knew how to do most of the basic stuff (probably up to 3 wrenches on Stillen's difficulty chart) before I started and so this will be my first major project. So far I've learned a lot about my car and actually its not as bad as it all looks under there. If you take your time, read the manual and ask for help here on tt.net the job goes fairly smooth. Last night I took off the upper intake manifold and the remaining turbo (took off the passenger side the night before). After looking at what I've done so far I am much more confident on working on my engine. I'm going to reflect upon a few things that I ran across when doing the job: First few days:
I started off the job first by taking off all the basic stuff that I could in my own garage. Underbody panels, exhaust system, radiator, misc. hoses and wires all came apart fairly easily. I was still intimidated at this point and still had thoughts of just taking the car to SGP. :) About a week later:
Finally got the car towed to my warehouse garage my friends and I rent. I got the car in the air and started pulling off the accessories and belts. Quick note: If you have a power steering fluid leak get it fixed ASAP!! If you let it sit then it can get really nasty down in the engine bay. Throughout the week I kept taking off connectors and hoses here and there until I couldn't find anymore. That's when I decided to take off the tranmission. The Transmission:
During this whole project the transmission was the most annoying part so far (I still havent gotten to the ECU wiring harness yet). To make a long story short, I couldn't get the top transmission bolts off until I took off the motor mount bolts and tilted the engine back. That made the whole job a lot easier but I wasted several days cussing while trying to get my big hands in between the transmission and body. The engine pull:
Hoist, snag, cut hose (or unclip connector), repeat. That's pretty much the repetition I got into while lifting the engine out. It actually comes out fairly straight up and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. The only gripe I have is the number of hoses and connectors there are hidden all over the place! I just KNOW I'm going to miss something when I put it back together. Mounting the engine to a stand:
Okay, so this process isn't that hard but I thought I'd put it in cuz I had one hell of a time trying to find the right bolts to hold the engine up. Once I did I didn't have any help putting the engine bracket onto the stand itself so that was a major pain. After fiddling around with the engine hoist I finally got the thing mounted. Damn this thing is heavy!!! Next time I'll get some help. Taking stuff apart:
Okay, for those of you who did the turbo swap with the engine in the car you must be some kind of contortionist. I can't see how you can get to some of the bolts mounting the whole thing together! Even with the engine out I had one hell of a time trying to undo the locking bracket that hold the turbo to the manifold. Unbelievable! Anyway, with the exception of the locking bolt, the turbo removal wasn't bad at all. Everything was pretty obvious but I had to cut a lot of hoses cuz everything was so damn old! The part that was a bit of a pain was the upper intake plenum. Geez, this thing has hoses growing out of every single crevice. I was expecting the manifold to be siezed onto the engine but it came up fairly easily. I will never drive my car on the beach again! Sand was everywhere from last year when I went to the beach! Once enough hoses were cut I was finally able to remove the upper plenum and decided to call it a night. Questions:
I have a couple of questions for some of you who've already done this:
1. I plan on removing the EGR system from the car. How should I go about plugging up the holes in the upper intake manifold and the driver exhaust manifold?
2. Are silicone vacuum hoses up to the job of running water from the turbo through them? How about oil? I'll update you guys again when I'm ready to muse some more. :)
John Yim (Houston)
91 ZTT Stage III+
30 BSP, Houston Region SCCA
"...Just as they're about to catch me... Twin... Turbos... Kick... In..."
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