We did try using the head bolts but then the eyes stuck out too far to let us get it out of the car boot. There's not a lot of weight in the engine and we only really needed to lift it up a little to get it over the lip of the boot, and lower it to the ground.
Ferryman: I lifted it out of the range rover using your method, as you note much stronger etc. Getting it out of the car, and putting it back in to the range rover I went the two hole route - I'd say those bolts are more than strong enough as once I bolted it up to the gearbox and lifted it up for the front engine mounts, it was still quite happy. I wouldn't lift the whole assembly that way, but for what I was doing here it worked well, and minimised risk of damaging the freshly skimmed block surface.
Miah please don't get me wrong, this is no criticism but just a remark. I respect everyones way of working as long as it's needed for that moment.
If I take out/put in an engine (not always the lightweight alu-type) there often is a lot of wiggling needed to get it in place and therefore I want a solid bunge.
On the other hand I've removed gearboxes just leaning on a scissorjack without knowing the actual weight.
The situ dictates the way you work, for that you are right.
Still is a nice engine though...
Ferryman: I get where you're coming from; and generally agree :)
Oil arrived this morning, so I now have all the bits to make it chooch again. Might put a few hours in this evening, weather permitting.
I was thinking of lifting the block out of our red one using these two holes too - as the heads are off, manifolds off etc.
So didn't make a lot of progress tonight. Those torque converter bolts are a total swine to torque up. Gave up in the end.
Sloth and I didn't have enough too much trouble.. but then I guess it's easier with 2 so one can hold the crank steady and spin it when needed.. on your own, I can imagine it's a pain!
Exactly that. Locking the crank alone is a non starter.
Well after a good portion of yesterday and an hour or so today picking up some coolant, it lives!
I'd forgotten how quickly the fuel needle moves.. Dropped from one line to the next one down in a short test drive after breaking in the engine.
Gems are a pita to do the torque converter bolts, a bloody great plate removed, but only 2 points you can get at, I'd rather do a Thor through the hole any day, I normally mark the front pulley after I've got first one lined up at 3.6 & 9. Then even alone it's easier to do. Glad your up and running
Couple of days in, and it seems to be mostly OK.
A slight oil leak from around the pump area - suspect I need to tighten up the bottom oil cooler pipe a bit more.
I'm still getting the occasional whiff of coolant after coming to a stop, and a couple of cold starts have been accompanied by the noise of water flowing through the heater matrix pipes (ie. air). Doesn't seem to be excessively pressurising though, so I guess I live with it for now and see if it clears up.
Torque wise, hard to say really, as I barely drove it before doing the engine. Hoping Gordon or someone else local can drive it and see what they think.
Hevac seems to be relatively happy now, no cheque book icon since the rebuild. So I've begun the process of reinstalling the dash. Got three out of the four bolts back in, will fight with the fourth again another day when it's dry and I have a helper.
Found the manual key for the sunroof, and confirmed that the mechanism is jammed solid. Will come back to this once the dash is sorted and the driveway cleared a bit.
Rear wiper has a mind of it's own. Mostly it doesn't park properly, and I'm guessing a side effect of that is that it doesn't know when to stop the wiper for intermittent operation. It briefly worked today for about 5 minutes, but soon went back to wiping continuously. Is the park switch serviceable on the motor?
Diagnostics can't talk to GEMS ECU again, so I'm guessing my bodge has corroded away and/or fallen out. I bought a replacement connector off eBay which I was planning to swap in to replace the old one, but instead I might just use one of the new pins and fix the old plug/connector. Was going to make up a metal shield to sit over the connectors too, but didn't get around to it. Might do it one day.
Air con seems to work, sometimes/usually, but the fans aren't spinning up. I need to dig into this further.
mace wrote:
Torque wise, hard to say really, as I barely drove it before doing the engine. Hoping Gordon or someone else local can drive it and see what they think.
Gordon had a play, and didn't seem to think it was too shabby.
He noted some tapping from the top end of the right hand head.
Hevac seems to be relatively happy now, no cheque book icon since the rebuild. So I've begun the process of reinstalling the dash. Got three out of the four bolts back in, will fight with the fourth again another day when it's dry and I have a helper.
Got all four in now, bit of a mission with the side air vent ducts in situ, but getting at their screws after install is nigh on impossible.
Rear wiper has a mind of it's own. Mostly it doesn't park properly, and I'm guessing a side effect of that is that it doesn't know when to stop the wiper for intermittent operation. It briefly worked today for about 5 minutes, but soon went back to wiping continuously. Is the park switch serviceable on the motor?
Bump. Had a quick look at the motor on the vehicle, but the switch appears to be embedded inside, with just the terminals sticking out. Thoughts?
Diagnostics can't talk to GEMS ECU again, so I'm guessing my bodge has corroded away and/or fallen out. I bought a replacement connector off eBay which I was planning to swap in to replace the old one, but instead I might just use one of the new pins and fix the old plug/connector. Was going to make up a metal shield to sit over the connectors too, but didn't get around to it. Might do it one day.
Swapped a pin/socket from the eBay connector, and can talk to the GEMS ECU again. No faults, bonus.
Air con seems to work, sometimes/usually, but the fans aren't spinning up. I need to dig into this further.
Dug further, fuses are fine, relays are fine, manually bridging the contacts on the "trinary" switch gets the one fan spinning and sometimes the compressor. I suspect the issue here is further upstream, as I'm only seeing ~ 0.7 volts on the incoming wire to that switch on its way to the compressor, most of the time. I've not measured what it reads when the compressor actually kicks in, since it's enough to drive the clutch solenoid successfully.
When it does kick in, the small pipe coming out of the compressor gets really hot. No noticable temperature differential at the connection on the condenser, and no real change in temperature at the vents, perhaps very slightly cooler. Typing all this out, I'm wondering whether the system is low on refrigerant.
Cruise control still isn't working. I've gone back through the diagnostics and they check out all the way to the final 'must be the ECU then' test. Gordon reckoned the relay should click when attempting to engage the cruise, and I'm not hearing that either.
If the small pipe on your A/C compressor is hot, but the large one is not cold soon after engaging (say 30 seconds at most), its low on gas or may have none at all and could just be compressing air. If its not cold, check the large pipe at the firewall too where it comes into the engine bay - see what its like there.
In a UK climate, the two electric fans generally never actually come on if your viscous fan is working properly, they are only turned on by the single and trinary pressure switches which are based on pressures in the system. The viscous fan keeps the condenser sufficiently cool to negate them ever needing to come on. The only other time they would come on is if the engine is overheating, but its usually too late anyway!
Also if bridging the terminals of the trinary switch only brings one fan on, that will be the high speed mode, suggesting the other fan is open circuit (either unplugged or broken motor), as they are electrically connected in series in the 'low' speed mode. The low speed is turned on by the single pressure switch. If all were working properly, bridging the single pressure switch with the engine running and A/C on should run the fans in the low speed.
In high speed, they're connected in parallel, should both spin and make quite a noise.
Cheers sloth. The small pipe at the pump was too hot to touch, and the return wasn't cold at all. I didn't test bridging the contacts on the single pressure switch, as I ran out of time. Will give that a shot at some point, ta.
Gas pressure is good; had it checked today. Have ordered up a replacement trinary switch, hopefully that'll sort it. Technically I should've tested the old one, but that involves taking the bumper off again and I couldn't be bothered.
AC didn't work on mine when I first got it so I had it vacuum tested and gassed but the compressor still didn't kick in. I suspected one or other pressure switch but found that unplugging them and giving a squirt of contact cleaner sorted it. I didn't take the bumper off, you can get to them from underneath if you have double jointed arms.
Gilbertd wrote:
AC didn't work on mine when I first got it so I had it vacuum tested and gassed but the compressor still didn't kick in. I suspected one or other pressure switch but found that unplugging them and giving a squirt of contact cleaner sorted it. I didn't take the bumper off, you can get to them from underneath if you have double jointed arms.
This is what I did with my trinary switch as well. Worked too!
Thanks for the suggestions. I had the bumper off yesterday to do a bit more digging, and the switches both tested as the pressure being OK with a continuity tester.
So I then bridged the two terminals on the trinary switch to enable the clutch, but still not getting clutch engagement - most of the time. It did engage for a bit at one point like this, after waiting a few minutes, but I wasn't able to reproduce it later. Even when engaged, although the top pipe from the compressor to the condenser gets really rather hot, the temperature of the bottom pipe never seems to change much, and of course the temperature in the car (or via nanocom) stays resolutely where it was.
It's really frustrating that nanocom can't show the status of outputs like 'clutch enable', rather than just the air-con demand signal. :(
One suggestion I found online was to figure out which wire on the back of the HEVAC drives the clutch, and put 12 volts down it to check whether it does anything. Not had time to do this yet. Any other thoughts on where to look?
In engine news, I'm slowly working my way towards the first 1000 miles. However I have a question about how smooth the engine should be at idle (and whilst revving to some extent). Whilst looking at the 4.0 thor the other day to do the o-rings, before we drained it, he started it up - it was velvety smooth at idle. My 4.6 gems sounds significantly more tractor like - is this normal between the two generations, or is my engine still not right? Unfortunately I don't really know what they are supposed to sound like when in top health. :(
It should be relatively quiet, but of course unless you change absolutely everything you might have a few tapping noises here and there, my Thor is deadly silent, but it's only done 40k and been looked after by the looks of it, the original engine even after a rebuild was still tappy!, but i didn't replace tappets, rocker shafts and rockers.
mace wrote:
One suggestion I found online was to figure out which wire on the back of the HEVAC drives the clutch, and put 12 volts down it to check whether it does anything. Not had time to do this yet. Any other thoughts on where to look?
The feed from the HEVAC to the compressor clutch goes via the multiway connector in the RH footwell, behind the panel where the fuel shut off switch lives. When mine was only working intermittently, I found it was dropping volts due to a corroded connection in there so bypassed it. I also had a too large air gap on the compressor clutch (needs to be between 17 and 30 thou but closer to the lower figure if possible) so took the shim out from behind it and it's worked perfectly ever since.
My 4.6 gems sounds significantly more tractor like - is this normal between the two generations, or is my engine still not right?
Don't forget your engine is still tight. Mine didn't sound good when I first fired it up and didn't really want to rev either. Wait until after you've done the 1,000 miles with cheapo oil and done a change before getting too worried. As said, valvegear is the main source of rattles and that hasn't been changed.