A long overdue Update
When I last updated on the progress on my truck, this is where we were:
Anyway, a bit has happened since then, and this is what the engine bay looks like now:
although even thats slightly outdated. I realized upon looking at the photos I've got that I don't have a good full picture of the engine bay, but since this photo all thats been removed further is the timing belt, pulleys, water pump and valve covers: this next one was taken after the timing belt and idler and tensioner pulleys were removed:
And then, the camshaft gears were pulled out:
and finally the rear timing cover and water pump:
you'll also notice in the top pic that theres a blue paper towel overtop the passenger side cylinder head. thats because I had just removed the valve cover there and I put the paper towel there to keep dust and whatnot out. unfortunately I neglected to get a pic of the exposed camshaft and valves.
At this point tho... we're about ready to start putting it all back together. I need to thoroughly clean everything i pulled out and get my replacement parts ready, and I'm gonna do quite a lot of cleaning in the engine bay as well, but we're ready to start putting it back together, basically.
But before that, a brief overview of everything leading up to this!
one of the first things I did after that last post I did was pull the radiator and fan out:
then it was time to remove the accessory drivebelts and pulleys. these are the belts that drive the ac compressor, power steering pump, alternator, and in this trucks case the supercharger:
after that I removed the upper timing cover which exposed the timing belt
I had to remove the fan pulley in the middleish there, and then came the really fun part. Getting this giant crankshaft pulley out:
thats what drives all the accessory belts from the output shaft of the engine. It had a pretty large bolt holding it on which was stuck on there quite good. In the end, I had to use my impact wrench, a weighted impact socket and I had to hit it with a propane torch for several minutes to get it out:
that thing behind the bolt is a special tool for holding the pulley in place while you remove the bolt. and the bolt is on the ground because its really fucking hot. also I love this next picture because you can see smoke coming out of the hole the bolt left:
after that getting the pulley out was a breeze
next came the lower timing cover which was just underneath that pulley
didn't get a closeup of the lower timing belt after removing that cover, but you can see at the bottom of that second image that the crankshaft timing gear is exposed, and with that the whole timing belt is now exposed.
I took a break from the timing work to work up top on the engine next. I decided I wanted to replace the valve cover gaskets cause I think thats whats causing the oil leak (and it was becoming quite apparent that the oil leak was pretty bad the deeper I got here and the easiest way to get to the valve covers was to pull the intake apart, which could probably also use a good cleaning. So I removed the air filter box, air intake hose, throttle body and supercharger. I didn't get a lot of good pics of that cause i was a bit too involved in the work, but here's a pic of the engine bay before I started with all those parts labeled:
And hey look, a supercharger! yeah I forgot to mention that this engine is supercharged. This was a rare factory option for this truck back in the day and its in my hands because of shear dumb luck. It's also a pain in the ass because this means it requires premium gas, and the supercharger is likely going to need to be rebuilt soon, which is sure to be expensive! fun. and I can't just take it out because it replaces the stock intake manifold, so I'd have to track one of those down. anyway it does make it fun to drive and gives the engine a very recognizable whine when running, which I'd be sad to hear go away.
and that about brings us to where we were at the top. I might go back later and properly label these images but I kind just wanted to give an update on what progress had been made so I didn't do that just yet. feeling a bit lazy today. Hopefully I can get this back together faster than it took to get it apart, I ended up having a fairly busy couple months which delayed me and I had to wait on parts and some specialized tools to get here. i won't be able to work on it this next week cause I'm going on a trip with my family. anyway, thats that


















