With the demise of the bottom end on the Mi16 I'm having to pull the engine out once again in preparation for the new engine being fitted in early June. So I've decided to put together a kind of 'blog' of the engine removal and general development of the car. 1st May 2006 - With the engine out of the way I went about pulling some more stuff out of the car, mostly the Cobra Monaco seats and subframes as I've sold those and have some Cobra Imola seats to be fitted. I also wanted to get the engine look out of the car again so I can really clean up the engine bay. The engine loom is quite a neat self-contained affair that simply has 2 multiplugs that clip into the main 205 loom, with those undone the whole loom easily comes out of the car. The next updates will now be on stripping the car some more and preparing the chassis for the new engine, the biggest task being to fit the dry sump system. I'm also going to be pulling the dash out to remove the last of the sound deadening and doing something with the roof/sunroof. 29th April 2006 - After borrowing an engine crane for the day a few mates came over (Stu, Chris and Andy) to help with the engine removal, or so they said... I think they just wanted to see how messed up the bottom end was! Anyhow, the first job was to lower the engine in the bay so that we could easily remove the 4-2-1 manifold. We messed up a little as we'd threaded the rope THROUGH the manifold so we have to un-hook the engine from the crane to get it off. Oh, and we were using nylon rope as I didn't have any chains, but I've used nylon rope many times before and found it works very well. So with the manifold off we pulled the engine out of the car, I'd already removed the gearbox engine mount/battery tray for more clearance. Then the gearbox was removed, only a few bolts and as it's been off not that long ago it was a breeze. With the clutch and flywheel also removed we bolted up the engine stand mount and within minutes had the engine off the crane and sitting happily on the stand. It was now time to get into the engine... Once we had removed what felt like about 40 sump bolts we had the sump on the floor... and then stood back in awe and wonder at the shiny mess we were presented with. Needless to say it was the majority of a big end bearing sat in the bottom of the sump. So we flipped the engine on it's side and had a look at which bearing it was. Turned out to be from piston 3 (counting from the cambelt end looking at the engine as fitted in the car) and we were able to rock the conrod on the crank quite a lot, you can download a quick movie of the movement. So we carried on taking the crank out and the rest of the big end bearing fell out as well. Going to send the crank off to see if it's salvageable or not, hope so as I'd like to build this back up and sell it on. I'm glad that I will be picking up my new engine at the end of the month! With the manifold now removed I was also able to check the condition as I had a feeling it was blowing, and my feelings were correct. Turns out that there is a crack between one of the 2-1 sections. It's easy to see so I'm going to look at either getting this one repaired or even having one made by an exhaust contact that I have. Either way, I can only guess that the car would have lost some power due to the exhaust manifold leak which started just after it was mapped. 27th April 2006 - Adam popped over in the evening to help move things along, and boy did they move along! We basically went around the engine taking off all the bits we could think of with an aim to simply leave the engine on two engine mounts ready to come out on the weekend, and mission accomplished! It never ceases to amaze me how simple the 205 is, just a few bolts here and there and it's in pieces. It's quite handy that most of the car has been apart before, including the removal of the subframe last year.. it essentially means that we've had no problem undoing any of the nuts/bolts and things have gone smoothly. This enabled us to take things as far as we could without actually dropping the engine out, which is now just left sitting on the two top engine mounts. Next update will be at the weekend when we remove the engine, get it on a stand and take the sump off to assess the damage from the sump bearing etc. 26th April 2006 - Having already drained the oil from the engine and gearbox at over the weekend (there was no metal in the engine oil, which is a good sign!) I just needed to crack on with removing stuff! First was to get the driveshafts removed, which involves undoing the often tricky hub nut. Fortunately, as my car has been apart so many times now most things come loose nice and easily, and so did these. With then loosened the car was put on axel stands and things started to move along nicely. Undoing the tie rods, removing the drop links, undoing the ball joint and releasing the hub from the shock was pretty easy this time around having all been off in the past year anyhow. Then the shocks came out and the strut brace too. Last to be removed were the drive shafts, now the passenger side is easy and once removed from the hub it just kind of falls out of the gearbox. On the drivers side you have to undo and rotate the 2 bolts on the rear engine mount, this catches a fair few people out first time around (I know it caught me out a couple of years ago!). Once you know how it works it's easy to get them undone and the drivers driveshaft out. Final job for the evening was removing the front calipers, simply a case of undoing the flexi hose from the solid hose join in the inner wing. I thought it would leak brake fluid everywhere but it didn't leak a drop! And that's the progress so far... designed by: