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Engine Removal Problem - Help!


krs

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
49
City
St. Louis, MO area
Vehicle Year
1998
Transmission
Automatic
I am continuing my "saga" of trying to remove my first engine. My objective is to replace it with a salvage-yard engine.

I am down to one last bolt on the y-pipe on the exhaust manifold (none of them would unscrew, so I cut them off with a cut-off tool). The remaining one does not give you much room to get the tool to it, but I am not excited about putting the torch to it! Suggestions are welcome!

The other remaining thing (the big problem) is that I went to remove the torque converter nuts, removed the first one fine, and then went to turn the crank-shaft, and found the engine is locked up. So how does one separate the transmision from the engine when you cannot turn the engine to remove the torque converter nuts?????

This leads to the question as to why is the truck engine frozen. The 98 3.0L ranger has about 165,000 miles on it, and my son was driving it a couple of weeks ago, and it just died on the side of the road. Oil was all over the engine on the driver side - it was even iin the air-cleaner outlet tube. I am thinking a ring cracked, and oil shot up through the intake manifold (and anywhere else it could) from the driver side of the engine, and maybe it locked up the given piston in the cylinder????

What I am thinking is either haul the truck to the junkyard, or take the head off on the driver side, and see if I can free-up the bind....

Sound reasonable? Any other suggestions?
 
Try pulling the sparkplugs.
 
Pull the plugs to turn the motor. As for the exhaust flange try a nut splitter or a long breaking bar. If all else fails Dremel with metal cutting wheel.
One last thing, I thought the torque converter slide of the tranny shaft? You could carefully slide motor forward and back the tranny up to get the space needed.
 
Why not take exhaust manifold to engine bolts off? They were much easier to take off when I pulled my engine than the y-pipe bolts.
 
I spent little time on the engine today - removed all the spark plugs - engine still will not turn....

I am not in a hurry (not depending on the truck for transportation), and am curious as to what happenned, so I took off the intake manifold, and one valve cover (the side that I think is the problem), and took tension off the rockerarms, meaning all the valves would be closed - that did not help either.

Gearing up for taking off the head, and see what I find. Given I will have to take off the exhaust manifold from the engine, if I cannot find something to free up turning the engine, I will try removing the engine with the torque converter attached as suggested...
 
Have you tried turning the engine counterclockwise, then clockwise? Even blown, up most engines will turn a given degree of rotation before some thing gets in the way internally from the damage. Also you need to turn the engine from the front with a socket & big breaker bar on the harmonic balancer. As for the converter sliding off the trans shaft & still attached to the flex-plate, it can be done but it needs to slide off very straight or you can easily damage the seal ring in the bottom of the converter, & you generally wont know the damage is done until its put back together & the lockup function no longer works in the converter.

JP02XLT
 
Hi JP02XLT,

Yes I have tried going both ways on the crankshaft bolt, using a 3/4" breaking bar. Going counter-clockwise, I just take the bolt off, although we had put enough torque going clockwise that we still were putting quite a bit of pressure going the other way before loosing the bolt.

Thanks for the insight on sliding the converter off - more reason to try to get the engine to rotate!

I hope to spend some time on it this weekend...
 
Sounds like she is locked up tight allright, you may find it easier to pull the motor & trans together, then when you get it out of the truck separate the motor and trans in the floor. At least that way you can be more careful with the converter.

Good Luck

JP02XLT
 
Yeah the converter should slide off, sometimes it tends to make a mess...
 
Got both heads off this weekend.

You can see that one of the pistons does not look too good!
 

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Why not take exhaust manifold to engine bolts off? They were much easier to take off when I pulled my engine than the y-pipe bolts.

If they use as much salt on the roads down there and they do up here in NY, those manifolds aren't coming off the engine without breaking a few studs.
 
If they use as much salt on the roads down there and they do up here in NY, those manifolds aren't coming off the engine without breaking a few studs.

When I took my 17 year old bolts off last year (on a truck that sees as much salt as the next one) it was not as bad as you'd think. They looks like crap and the previous owner had one that had broken off but the rest came off with a bit of fighting but no more broke. The one that had already broken off came out with some well place vice grips. Plus, if you're just pulling the engine to put a new one in having broken studs won't make any difference. Looks like he got them off ok, though.
 

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