Well.................FAIL!

Thought today would be the day that I got that crankshaft bolt off.

NOT!

Ruined a perfectly good extension cord too.

So, I wait to get a chain wrench.

Here's some pics......I thought it would work.......but........NOPE!


The dreaded crankshaft bolt....PB Blaster soaked too.

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This is the stuff you put under a carpet to keep it from sliding. THAT worked!

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No, seriously, I thought it would work........Looks like some sort of weed-wacker rescue truck.

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FAIL!

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Well the good thing is now you have twice as may extension cords!!!

In all honestly I think I would have used a nylon rope or anything other than my extension cord.

I hope it was not plugged in...

All in all that sucks man!

What happened to the chain wrench idea??? Get the wrench a pipe and wedge it in the frame or on the floor somewhere.

 

Well the neighbor that though he could get one said all they have is chain "pipe" cutters. The other "friend" that works at a garage, I finally talked to Monday and he said "we just hit it with the impact wrench".......ARGHHHHHHH!

Don't laugh, I was gonna try an old garden hose.

"gold line'' rope is what we used to use in the Rescue for general purpose stuff of hoisting equipment etc... about 20ft of a good nylon rope would cover it.......I DO have webbing from my old rapelling / Fireman days......HMMMMMMM............

 

Give the rappelling rope a shot but....the rope is meant to stretch so I'm not sure how well that will work. give it a shot!!!

I think the hose would have done better.

I know, I was suppose to have some help doing these springs but I'm still doing it myself. I am how ever stopping up at a guys house Sat. he's going to help me out with the Pan Hard Bar, never met the chap he's on another forum I'm on. Maybe that says something about me...

 

Incoming carnage........................

 

So I went down the basement and found about 20 feet of webbing.

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here we go again.

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AND.....................

ANOTHER FAIL !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now the breaker-bar is just a beatin' stick.
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Wow I hope your head was no where near the handle of that thing!!!
Clank Boom!!!

Well now your really in a pickle. I don't recall the make of the bar can you take it and have them replace it so that you do not have to purchase a new one?

 

Harbor Freight.....I'll have to check about a warranty.....not worth the gas to go there.....about 40 miles away or more.....so to get a free one would be good....maybe I should have stuck with Craftsman.......again, you get what you pay for.

No,no head injury.
No,no head injury.
No,no head injury.

Whoa.

Joking........it was more like a slow shearing of the nubby part. I guess I'm an animal, breaking stuff all the time like that. LOL.

Well, I guess I have a growing shopping list now. Even thugh I think I have to "borrow" an impact wrench (how the hell do I get one to fit in there??), I'm still going to need that breaker bar again someday so I should replace it.

-Breaker Bar
-Chain wrench
-beer
-smokes
-impact wrench
-ski mask
-get money......................JOKING!!!!!!!!!!

 

Man that makes me want to send you my snap-on so you can get that thing off, now if you can find a way to put a bar on the drivers side frame and just turn your motor over with the key. If you can't get it off in the next couple days let me know and I will send you my snap-on but you have to pay shipping there and back.

 

I wish I lived by you. You have been the most generous person I've encountered in a long time with all your offers of help and supplies.........you must be a GREAT MAN!!

I'm learning lots of lessons along this short journey so far....some at great personal expense but all for my benefit and I like to document it along the way for others who were or are apprehensive about doing work like this.

Before March, I never even changed my own oil.....the most I ever did was cosmetic stuff and changing my tires, so as I've said before, everything I do, I do for the 1st time.

 

Now.

Again, since this is MY THREAD, I will take the liberty of throwing in, yet again, another picture that has nothing to do with my truck. OK, well it WAS in the garage, so maybe that counts.

We all have things we are paralyzed with fear by and would rather not encounter.......for me it's that guy from the mortgage company that called every other day for about 3 months a year ago (took care of that little problem) AND SPIDERS.

I hate spiders. I REALLY friggin' hate spiders. So why on earth do i keep finding them? I'll tell you why......because I moved from the city (yes we had spiders) and built a big house in the woods far,far away..........

True story......2 years ago after working a 16hr shift, i was unwinding my usual way after being wound up working in an ER for 16+ hours........having a beer and a smoke, when i was in the grage, i thought i saw a mouse.........long story short, it was a humungous G-D spider......about 3 inches worth, I captured it, photgraphed the hell out of it, made a picture presentation with my son about it and then "discarded it". that one was called a "carolina wolf spider"......in the past 2 years i've encountered 4 more, none quite as large as that one and hopeully never ever again will i see one THAT large.

But, last night, while having a smoke outside, i saw this one........not very big, only about and inch or 1 1/2'' long at most, but one of the craziest looking things i've ever seen......pictures don't do it justice, it was chrome silver with the colored bands.......it's remains can be found on the bottom of my shoe. this one is called a banded garden spider. No i'm not a bug expert, but i don't accept "i don't know" as a final answer and i don't provide that either as my final answer. so myself and my sons researched until we found our answer. anyway.....here's a picture of it. i will find one of that other spider too......maybe. they must know i hate them and that is why they annoy me on purpose.

Boy I wish i had something to do, you know you are bored when you are posting pictures of spiders. Wish it was payday and i could buy a breaker bar.

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I hate spiders!!!

 

For me, it's snakes. I like spiders in general, though not the black widows that are everywhere here. My truck sat for a few weeks in my driveway before I started pulling the motor. Two days before, at night, I counted 8 black widows underneath, and I knew there were more. I mixed up some insecticide and drenched everything underneath and in the engine compartment. Found quite a few dead spiders as work progressed.

I'm in a similar position to yours. I've done a little more in the past than change oil, but nothing near the scale of pulling, rebuilding and reinstalling an engine. And money is very tight. I had to sell a rifle I really liked to help absorb the blow to my already-straining credit card. My truck chose a bad time to conk out.

Good luck whatever you decide, but here's a vote for going through the whole thing. You could stick some Band-aids on it, but then all your effort, as well as most of the money spent, would be wasted when not too far down the road you'll have to start all over again to do it right.

 

I hate to say it, but you are documenting what not to do. It is actually very useful info. With time aplenty, just wait it out and get the right tools and parts to do everything the right way. Then you will have the pleasure of driving a practically new motor like others have ( bleeder and olharley ).
I am like you and most everybody else in that I have never done anything like this, but by the grace of yotatech it will get done. I know this for a fact. and it will get done correctly.
My Dad used to say "Do it right or don't bother doing it at all". On the surface, it is a statement that gives a way out, to be lazy, but it speaks of the commitment, perserverance and personal pride of accomplishment when done. No pressure, we are all watching and living vicariously thru you.
GOOD LUCK.

Patience Grasshopper.

 

Ok....my only issue is the "what not to do" comment...the rest I understand perfectly. I'm sure you didn't mean that as an insult because I'm pretty sure I'm documenting a very realistic thread for all of us brand-new to wrenching on a vehicle.

A few asides though.......I am certainly of the "do it once do it right" mind-set, and definitely won't button this engine back up with questionable reliability of a part(s).While I do this tear-down and hopefully soon will progress to a re-build, I am learning a few things.......

1)PB Blaster is the best thing ever as far as I've found.

2)If you are going to get a breaker bar, buy one capable of handling the torque at it's weakest point....the place where the socket attaches.

3)take lots and lots of pictures (as I have) and hopefully you will have that 1 picture you need to figure out "where does this go...?" or help someone else with "what is this wire supposed to be attached to.....?"

4)don't be in a hurry and likewise don't have a overly long list of things you would like to get accomplished today, because something is bound to teach you who is boss.

5)don't be afraid to ask questions.......I was, alot! I saw guys get chopped down here and other sites being told to "try the SEARCH button" etc....which, while it may be annoying to some who may have seen the same question posed the same way or several different ways a million times.......it may be due to lack of time / patience or searching skills that the question IS being asked a millionth time. Hell with all the rambling and off-topic stuff that has occurred on this thread and most of the others, it can get VERY frustrating to read a thread looking for an answer and have to read about a spider that some guy found in his garage or see a picture of a grasshopper on a sunflower.

6) remember that no matter what SKILL level you may think you are at there at persons more skilled and less skilled than you that can either help you or learn from you......(in looking a rebuild threads I would get tired of seeing a piture of an engine in a truck and then the next was a piture of it out of the truck and say to myself "I'm never gonna figure this out")

7)No matter what you break or lose, it's available out there somewhere

8)Pizza boxes make excellent templates

9)Pizza boxes make excellent places to rest oily parts first

10)That once you start tearing down the engine, you realize that it's not as hard as you thought it was going to be.

11)You realize after writing a reply like this that the post that you a replying to was probably not meant to be negative in any way.

12) I'm sure I realized alot more than this, but that's enough for now.


So if by saying "how not to do things" you meant about me likely not pulling the block etc......., you may be right on that....but judging by the outward appearance of the block / piston heads and walls, I really don't NEED to according to me.

Also....being of limited "extra" money, my grand plan is to button my truck back up in time for winter, sell my Cadillac PIMP machine I've been driving around in, do a tear-down / look-see on my 13yr old son's 3vze and get that running reliably as well. Using the cash from the sale of the car I plan on fixing up his engine and THEN, having that vehicle running well, I will dig into my truck again...this time with all the bells and whistles........268 cam / header etc...etc....etc

Sorry for the rant...........I will stop now.

 

OK....Sir-Flips-A-Lot has left the building.

Just got me at the wrong time.....was up most of the night with the "what the hell did I eat that made me do this???" kinda episode since 230 this morning. Yeah, by the way, apparantly Ranch Salad dressing may have a shelf life less than the one that I used last night.......we all ate the same stuff, but I wanted to dip my breaded chicken strips in something "flavorful"..................UGH!

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program.................

I got my 3 ton floor jack and thought that I would try the jack to wrench trick. Yeah, it didn't work. I'm not going to rule it out, but a few problems became apparent with it........

1)there's a lateral movement happening when the jack is raised, so it was making the wrench have a bit of a twist>>>>rectified by hitting the wrench into place with a small sledge once it was under load.

2)the jack , at its highest raised point, falls short of where I needed it....again, not going to rule out this technique until I get the truck raised off the floor by doing this.......but I did take a soild brick and place it on top of the jack to extend it's reach, but then the wrench just popped off from the twisting.

So after that, I thought to myself that since I have the little sledge in reach, I would put the ratchet back on and hit it a few hard times........and again, we have a failure of another socket wrench at the nub where the socket goes on........so also, I can't rule out that method either, just need something better than the tools I have. I did have a better wrench and did hit that one, very hard, a few times, cautiously and then stopped. This is a GOOD set of tools I bought as a present for my son, so I don't NEED to break one of his.

So, feeling like crap anyway today, I think I gave it a good try with what I have available, for free, to me.

It's raining and cool today, so I don't feel like doing anything other than putzing.

Maybe a nap.....hmmmmmmmm

 

Well...sounds like your trying everything everyone is telling ya and to no avail!!!

I'm running out of ideas and I know you don't wanna hear this but you may have to bump the starter...

What size bar did you twist this time? Was it a 3/8 or a 1/2?
If it was the 3/8 you really need a 1/2 and give er hell 4' pipe.

 

3/8''......I know but I have quite a few of those and apparently they are disposable.

yes, the 1/2'' bar is on my shopping list for next Thursday
(payday).

Like I said, I'm not ruling out the "jack" trick, but again any method is only as strong as it's weakest point. The weakest point I have found is the "nub". Now I'm going to be very picky about the breaker bar...maybe a warranty too.


I guess I should have gotten that "bump the starter" method clarified before...sounds like it works for the most part..........but i need the "idiot's" version of how to make that work.

 

wow. i FINALLY joined the party. i FINALLY read through your thread (i know, i know, you asked me to read it about a week and a 1/2 ago!). sorry it took so long! i've got a few comments of my own, and i don't think anyone else has mentioned them.

1. are you considering NOT replacing your head gasket? you made a couple of posts to the effect of "it's not in THAT bad of condition, so i think i'll just clean it up". if so, i would HIGHLY advise against that. head gaskets are cheap. i got mine last week for i think like $22 at autozone. plus, i'm pretty sure they are made to deform as you tighten the head down, so it'll never seal properly again.
2. why do you need the crank pulley off? are you SURE you need to replace the front cover? the head gasket may not have "looked" bad, but that doesn't mean it didn't fail. my head gasket last week didn't have any obvious blown out spots (like one i did when i was 16 on a chevy nova), but it had an obvious wicked external coolant leak. maybe i missed something reading through your novel, but i'm not convinced it wasn't your head gasket that failed. if that is the case, you wouldn't need to replace your front cover, and, ergo, could leave your crank pulley on. just something to think about, and that goes for everyone who has been keeping up with this thread. like i said, maybe i missed something while reading through all 12 pages at once! if i did, then everyone tell me to shutup so i don't screw up 92! (course, if you're going to change your timing chain. . . . .)
3. as for the jack trick, i've been thinking about that a lot (sorry, i have an awful memory), and i'm starting to think i didn't do that on a lug nut, but on a brake caliper bolt. (the picture i posted in your other thread was staged for effect, i just took the picture a few days ago in my spare time). i actually think i used not a socket with extension, which would cause the torsion you're experiencing, but instead just used an open end box wrench. using an open end wrench would alleviate any of the twisting that the ratchet w/extension is causing and instead would put the entire force of the jack right on the crank bolt. next problem, i'm guessing you don't have a 19mm open end wrench, kinda like i don't have a 19mm open end wrench. . . .

 

oh, and just to agree with everyone else, the starter tricked worked flawlessly for me when i changed my timing chain a few years back. i was nervous as hell about it at first too. i was in college at the time living with 5 other major gearheads and we all collectively agreed it was worth trying. . . .carefully. it worked great without even a hint of a problem. after 1 hit of the starter, i pulled off the socket and was like ". . . .wait. . . .that's it? awesome!"