State of the Alfa
Sep. 18th, 2006 17:14![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillMy dad cleaned the points on the distributor this morning and started up the engine. Well, sort of.
The water pump was frozen. The shaft didn't turn at all. So... we set about pulling out the entire front of the engine. Off came the hood, and we drained the radiator. The radiator came out, then the fan, the pulley, and a flywheel. Next was the alternator. Then I spent a couple of hours trying to get the A/C compressor off -- we almost gave up until my dad discovered that the bracket could be pulled off with it still attached, and out came that whole chunk. Disconnect the hoses, fine (one had burst for no apparent reason). Unscrew all of the connection points for the water pump, take out the tach mount, haul the water pump off.
Almost. Turns out that the main pulley is in the way, so we need to snake an impact wrench (those "guns" they use to take off lug nuts at the wheel place) in there to drive the 1.75" socket without having to freeze the whole engine. As it is, you try to unscrew it and the engine turns over. So that will entail taking out the A/C condenser grid at the front so that we can bring the wrench in through the grille. The condenser will be a minute or two of work tomorrow.
The kicker? The water pump shaft turns fine now. We're thinking the fact that half the coolant is a gelid, crystalline mass might have had something to do with its initial trouble; the intake is completely blocked, and the entire thermostat is full of it. Every time I look at the gunk in the pipes I shudder -- I never, ever want to see solid coolant again. It reminds me forcibly of the Star Trek: NG episode where Dr. Crusher runs across a crewman in the hall whose blood is turning into a polymer. Very, very nasty.
We probably aren't going to put the A/C back in; it's its own project, and it can certainly wait. I wasn't looking forward to re-mounting it, that's for sure -- three out of four nuts on that were what took easily half the time today. It didn't hold a charge as it was. So we'll concentrate on getting the rest running.
Once we're done cleaning the coolant out and reassembling everything, I should be able to name everything under the hood, and the engine looks like it'll run. Progress.
Edit: We'll have to get a new gasket for the water pump before we can reassemble all of this... in the meantime, we can clean it out, flush the cooling system, and have a leisurely look at the oil filter, which is very exposed for once. If it doesn't seem very dirty -- it shouldn't be -- we can seal it back up again and not worry about it. The oil currently in there is acidic, though, having "sweated" sulfur compounds and had them recondense as sulfuric acid; it will need to be changed once we've really run it through the system to make sure it picks up all the crud. That'll be after we have the engine running for a bit, like around the block.
My dad is thinking about running it very soon, actually, as it can run for a few minutes without the water pump even being attached. It would let us see whether there were any other significant issues (the injectors obviously work to some degree, but may not be optimal, and there's a certain amount of coughing and sputtering to be done regardless). It seemed sluggish but not balky this morning, and that may have been due to the frozen water pump combined with a lack of torque from a groggy engine. We'll see.
Oh, and it's registered and legal for the road now. We have only liability at the moment, as it needs to be assessed for comprehensive etc... that'll be one of its first trips as a functional vehicle.
The water pump was frozen. The shaft didn't turn at all. So... we set about pulling out the entire front of the engine. Off came the hood, and we drained the radiator. The radiator came out, then the fan, the pulley, and a flywheel. Next was the alternator. Then I spent a couple of hours trying to get the A/C compressor off -- we almost gave up until my dad discovered that the bracket could be pulled off with it still attached, and out came that whole chunk. Disconnect the hoses, fine (one had burst for no apparent reason). Unscrew all of the connection points for the water pump, take out the tach mount, haul the water pump off.
Almost. Turns out that the main pulley is in the way, so we need to snake an impact wrench (those "guns" they use to take off lug nuts at the wheel place) in there to drive the 1.75" socket without having to freeze the whole engine. As it is, you try to unscrew it and the engine turns over. So that will entail taking out the A/C condenser grid at the front so that we can bring the wrench in through the grille. The condenser will be a minute or two of work tomorrow.
The kicker? The water pump shaft turns fine now. We're thinking the fact that half the coolant is a gelid, crystalline mass might have had something to do with its initial trouble; the intake is completely blocked, and the entire thermostat is full of it. Every time I look at the gunk in the pipes I shudder -- I never, ever want to see solid coolant again. It reminds me forcibly of the Star Trek: NG episode where Dr. Crusher runs across a crewman in the hall whose blood is turning into a polymer. Very, very nasty.
We probably aren't going to put the A/C back in; it's its own project, and it can certainly wait. I wasn't looking forward to re-mounting it, that's for sure -- three out of four nuts on that were what took easily half the time today. It didn't hold a charge as it was. So we'll concentrate on getting the rest running.
Once we're done cleaning the coolant out and reassembling everything, I should be able to name everything under the hood, and the engine looks like it'll run. Progress.
Edit: We'll have to get a new gasket for the water pump before we can reassemble all of this... in the meantime, we can clean it out, flush the cooling system, and have a leisurely look at the oil filter, which is very exposed for once. If it doesn't seem very dirty -- it shouldn't be -- we can seal it back up again and not worry about it. The oil currently in there is acidic, though, having "sweated" sulfur compounds and had them recondense as sulfuric acid; it will need to be changed once we've really run it through the system to make sure it picks up all the crud. That'll be after we have the engine running for a bit, like around the block.
My dad is thinking about running it very soon, actually, as it can run for a few minutes without the water pump even being attached. It would let us see whether there were any other significant issues (the injectors obviously work to some degree, but may not be optimal, and there's a certain amount of coughing and sputtering to be done regardless). It seemed sluggish but not balky this morning, and that may have been due to the frozen water pump combined with a lack of torque from a groggy engine. We'll see.
Oh, and it's registered and legal for the road now. We have only liability at the moment, as it needs to be assessed for comprehensive etc... that'll be one of its first trips as a functional vehicle.
