After
a leisurely trip to Halfrauds to buy a water pump and some new leads, the
engine was finally hoisted into the car. It didn't take long to have it
bolted in. A top tip here is to remove the bonnet. The ancillery parts were
then fitted, starting at the bottom with the oil pressure sender wires, then
the alternator and starter motor, followed by the water pipes, then the
inlet manifold and exhaust manifold. Then the clutch was fitted. Easy job on
the Astras. Normally!For starters I couldn't get the clutch to fit in the access hole. It was catching on the release bearing. So we had to undo the engine-gearbox bolts and crack open the join. We did them back up and I started to do up the clutch plate bolts. But then I couldn't get the input shaft to fit. After struggling for 10 minutes I resorted to hammering the input shaft. Big mistake. It didn't want to move. So we undid the engine-gearbox bolts. After more struggling I got the clutch out. I found that I'd mangled up the splines on the clutch plate. I filed them back and added a bit of taper. I checked that the input shaft fitted properly. Which it did.
For the final time we put the clutch in. The input shaft went in really nicely. So we did the engine-gear box bolts up. Time to do the clutch bolts up. I couldn't turn the clutch. Because it was wedged against the release bearing shaft. So we undid the engine-gearbox bolts again. Then I did the clutch bolts up. Thread lock was used on these. FINALLY we did the engine-gearbox bolts up.
What a carry on! It wasn't that depressing though, I knew that we'd get there eventually, it just took a while to get the combinations right.
We
were on the home run now. Of course, there was the background fear about
starting the engine up. I just got on with the boring jobs of bolting the
clutch cover plates on, the lower strut brace, the gearbox end plate. I'd
put about half the bolts in when I remembered to put the input shaft circlip
in. So the bolts came back out and the circlip was fitted. One of the bolts
also stripped a thread. It was so easily stripped that I suspect that it had
been near stripped when supplied. No big deal. there's a lot of neighbouring
bolts.
Finally
we were ready to go. I spent half an hour cleaning away tools before summing
up the courage for the big start up.I sat in the car, put the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine turned over. Didn't fire. Kept turning. Then it was going. Took a few seconds for the fuel system to pressurise. Result! I turned it off.
On the second trip out I watched the oil pressure and was concerned to see it drop by one display bar between 2000 and 3000 rpm. It seemed to come back to full pressure randomly. Sometimes it was at max, other times it would drop. At one point it dropped two bars and that really scared me.
Back at base I changed the oil for fresh stuff. I didn't want to take any chances with contamination in the oil. I'd been very careful to keep the engine clean, but bits could still be in there.
On the third run the car just stopped. I couldn't get it put down any power. Since I was only 1/2 a mile from base I drove it back in a very jerky full throttle, no power manner. Multiple complex theories about ECU faults rushed through me head. Then someone pointed to the air inlet pipe which had come off the inlet manifold. Big relief at that one.
On the fourth run the oil pressure seemed better. The misfire was bugging me though. I was convinced that it was an ignition fault. So I checked all the leads and found one of them a to be a bit loose. It was replaced with one of the old leads and the engine seemed to run a bit better.
On the road, however, it still didn't pull smoothly. By this time I was too tired to care. So I cleaned gave up for the night, vowing to logically work through it all the next day. I did have a minor sense of dread that it might be related to the valve lapping not sealing properly. I was pleased that we'd got the engine in with no dramas. But I was also worried that maybe I'd have to take it all back out soon.