Build 16. Engine Install
As my build is being done by installing the engine and gearbox separately, the engine "should" just now drop into place easily.
I attached the engine hoist and load leveller to the engine, and lifted it up to see how it would hang. When installing the engine with the gearbox attached there are reports that the engine "twists" on the hoist. I noticed that this did not happen at all when lifting the engine without the gearbox attached. That was a bonus.
The next test was to check that the engine would clear the top of the chassis with the hoist at it's maximum in the garage. I ended up having to reduce the chain length on the leveller in order to allow it to do this.
Once I was happy that the engine would clear the chassis I lowered it back onto the palette, and waited for my trust helper to arrive. For this I enlisted the help of my father in law who loves tinkering with machinery so he was the right fit for the job!
So once I there were two of us, we set to work on lowering the engine into the engine bay. The first thing we did was place a sheet of cardboard between the gearbox and the flywheel to avoid anything getting caught/damaged, This also helped guide the engine on the right path into the chassis. Generally lowering the engine was rather uneventful, other than the fact that we couldn't clear the first bar, because I left part of the alternator bracket on the engine, this was quickly removed and we plodded on.
I continued to lower the hoist whilst the other set of hands gently guided the engine down, stopping it from banging into anything it shouldn't.
We also needed to remove the black circular alternator belt wheel (the smooth one with 3 bolts in it) to get more clearance of the engine on the chassis, this was also relatively simple, especially with another set of hands to hold it, whilst someone loosened the bolts. We refit this and torqued the bolts to 30Nm once the engine was in place, (30Nm seemed like a good number to choose for this!)
At a certain point we needed to remove the carboard shield between the engine and gearbox and guide the engine down carefully, before it met the gearbox bellhousing. Once it was aligned, it took a bit of adjusting the load leveller, and adjusting the gearbox motorbike jack to get the engine and gearbox aligned. Once the two "metal dowels" were aligned and touching their slot (see middle top picture above for the metal dowel I'm talking about), we simply put 3 bolts into the gearbox (in a triangle pattern to allow some force from all parts of the join) and gently screwed them in using our fingers to pull the two pieces together, you can manually adjust the flywheel through the starter motor slot, if you need to line up the spline and clutch plates. There was no real resistance from any of the bolts, and thus we can be assured that it was going together nicely.
Once we were happy that all bolts were in place and the bellhousing had joined the engine, we torqued all the gearbox bolts up. Once they were torqued, we could remove the motorbike jack from under the gearbox and set to work installing the engine mounts.
Installing the engine mounts was also rather uneventful, we simply connected the mount to the chassis and the engine with the bolts, leaving them as loose as possible. Once all the bolts were in place, we used the hex keys to simply tighten them up "equally" tightening one side a little, then the other, then back again, until the became hand tight. At this point, I caught my hand on something (no idea what) because I looked down to see blood dripping onto the floor from my hand!
The next job was to get under the gearbox and then tighten the 6 bolts to their correct torque values and then mark them as done with a pen. Access was a bit tight here as I needed to put a hex key above and hold it whilst torquing them to stop them spinning.
Once these were done, we torqued the engine mounting bolts to their correct values.
All that was left to do was to remove the engine hoist and hope it didn't fall out!
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Summary
