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OK, well, i've gone over the method and looked over the engine in the state i've got it to now (i.e. at the "remove the sprocket" point in the haynes method) and can see why it has to be removed, at last (it holds the cambelt inner cover in place, which holds the head in place... etc) ........ but how do you get the tossing thing off?

I've resigned to using my torque wrench instead of one of the smaller, more easily handled socket bars as i've actually knackered one with the amount of force required, but at the same time im not pushing as hard as i might (think it was just a rubbish handle) as i dont want to mash the valves against the pistons - i just cant brace the thing stiffly enough in order to get leverage.

(maybe i should attempt setting the pistons to all being halfway down the bores, rather than TDC?)

short of raiding a scrappy for some random bits of steel and borrowing a punch off someone, to make up the bizarre and rather "how the bloody hell am i supposed to make THAT with a typical home mechanic's repertoire??" custom tool illustrated in the haynes manual, can anybod offer a handy hint on immobilising the blessed thing whilst i worry away at loosening the bolt?

oh....... and what in heaven's name is a Woodroffe key?

as your going to be renewing the timing belt I would suggest putting the car in gear and try to undo the bolt that way

oh....... and what in heaven's name is a Woodroffe key?

don't worry about it I don't think the mk2 and mk3 used them its just haynes useing old info.

in the course of arsing about with it i broke a bit of the inner cover off..... so i took a chance on possibly deforming the top face of the head and jammed the largest, plumber's grade, where-the-heck-did-we-get-this wrench thru one of the holes and braced it stiffly against the cam cover gasket (havent taken it off yet) at the point where the belt cover was broke. it angled a bit, but held until i had the thing turning relatively freely. the sprocket did turn a bit, but i've identified the TDC marks quite easily so had moved the crank about 1/8th turn away to make sure none of the pots would suffer a collision.

took pretty much all of my weight to crack the corrosion seal, too, and that's saying quite a lot at the moment. impressed at the strength of this torque wrench, thought it might be crap because of the low price but it appears to be stronger than at least one of my existing (non rachet) bars.

wouldn't have fancied torquing it against the cambelt, replacement or otherwise, i dont know if it would have offered enough strength given how hard i was pushing it (on the verge of scouting out scaffolded buildings to nick a pipe from). also i dont think it was tensioned right - it slid off the sprocket altogether too easily when i gave it a test push, didn't need to move the water pump or anything! timing hadn't slipped, however, was still in sync til i took it off, and belt doesnt look like it's stretched... on as loose as that it might easily have sponged off??
thanks for the tip, might have been better if it was on stronger!

so anyway....... it's off. hurt a bit, but it's off. doing quite nicely with this job now, if only i'd had five more minutes of natural light the head would be off all bits so far are in separate labelled bags, or appropriately grouped ones, and im good to go with disconnecting the downpipe, slaving thru the head bolt removal, lifting it off and getting oil and residual coolant (there's a litre and a half missing somewhere, and though i've spilt some it can't be more than a few hundred mils) widdled all over me, and then staring in bemusement at the decapitated block for a few minutes trying to figure out where to start with the next stage. Don't fancy the idea of getting the crank pulley bolt/s off one little bit, but i guess it's gotta be done.

lalalala

Couple of bits of advice, mainly from experience..

If you undo the camshaft sprocket by wedging a lump of metal through one of the holes in the sprocket, make sure you haven't fractured one of the spokes. This happened to one of mine, just a tiny hairline fracture, but I wouldn't trust it any more.

When you're undoing anything as tight as the camshaft, don't use a rachet of any sort to break it open, as the rachets do break under high pressures. Use a solid breaker bar or a sliding t bar, anything without a rachet mechanism.

If you're replacing the cam belt anyway the easiest way to remove the sprocket is by sticking it in top gear and just lumping the breaker bar with a great big mallet. Crude but effective. Don't re use the cam belt though

When you get to the part where you remove the head, make damn sure you follow the order in the manual for loosening the bolts, they're on there seriously tight (might want a big old breaker bar to get them started) and the head will warp if you don't remove them evenly.

PS: I'll try to find the missing piston tomorrow, promise

My own nugget of wisdom: Before trying to remove the inner cambelt cover bolts, first take off that evil little curved razor (aka the pointless hot air feed guide doofer) - it's held on by a bolt that also keeps the cover in place, but if you slip when doing one of the side bolts you'll likely as not catch some part of your hand and arm on it ..... it acts like a bacon slicer, hurts like buggery, and doesn't stop bleeding for hours even with a plaster (i'm on my third - and, i just peeled it back, and it's still wet and still pumping out red stuff... its only a surface scraze, gone down to the live dermis, but the sharpness of that sodding thing and the speed at which my thumb hit it is as bad as any papercut)

I did promise myself, as i was heaving on the torque wrench with every bit of my strength and the gravity of every flabby pound, that i'd go out tomorrow and get a proper breaker from halfords (and maybe a small rachet as well, as my only "short" handle is solid)
That, or Car Spares if they're open, as it won't be quite as wallet-achingly expensive.

Learned my lesson about getting the right tools for the job long back with the wheelnut fiasco, though (£7.99 on a decent, long-handle, chrome-vanadium wheelbrace saves a lot of frustration, a lot of sweat, and a lifetime of back pain compared to the usual crappy six-inches-of-iron ones! not to mention the embarassment of being defeated by a bloody wheel-nut)

Hey --- maybe i should ask Car Spares if they can help on the piston ring front?? Considering switching alleigance from GSF, or going halves, as they're starting to be more consistently helpful, and even the guy in GSF referred me up there when he couldn't supply a spline bit other than in a 50-piece, £13 set!

Anyway... Luckily the wrench's ratchet only "popped" once, and even then i'm not really convinced it did - more likely it was the bolt starting to move. The sprocket looks fine, but i will give it a closer view tomorrow. Don't want to start work to solve one engine problem only to cause another!

And don't worry...... i'm following the procedure to the hilt on this one, even though it's making everything take far too god damn long and complicated. I'm shuttling back and forth in the haynes like a madman following all the "see chapter so-and-so" things... arghhh... would it really make the thing so much thicker and more troublesome to print, to take a major and important procedure such as taking the head off and explain it all in one go with the details in one place and a few extra pictures (explaining, eg, what a "gear drive cover plate" is and where to find it)?? Cutting down on the possibility of a vital detail going missing when it's accidentally revised out of a section later on (viz. how to check & refill the gearbox oil....)
Though I seriously couldn't be arsed with the "remove the water pump" idea, as it turns out you DONT have to take it off, or completely remove the inner cambelt guard, in order to get the head off. The position of the thing and it's bolts gives me nightmares just looking at it.


Little questions:
I'm not sure any more... did you mention a 23 or 24mm socket within your list somewhere? That's one I certainly don't have, and i actually made do with a 15/16"ths (something like that) for the sprocket.. it's a surprisingly snug fit!

And the head bolt splines are 12mm, right, not the 10mm i was thinking for some reason? Luckily even Car Spares couldn't give me a single one, but did sell me a much smaller (six splines and an adaptor), much more reasonably priced set that included both. Did a test fitting with the new bolts and was taken by surprise.

I'm just waiting to see where the surprise of the 34mm socket is hidden! Though I reckon my 1 + 3/8"ths should do the job... whats a 3/4 millimetre play when it's a big jobbie like that, anyway?

The 34mm socket is for the hub end of the driveshafts if you're taking them out, you shouldn't need to though. If you do, make sure you get the metric size - 3/4 mm play isn't that much normally, but that thing is on tighter than you would believe possible and is an awkward shape that the socket always slips off if you're not careful. The 10mm spline you're thinking of is for the gearbox end of the driveshafts.

Are you actually removing your engine, or are you dismantling it in situ?

Buggered if i'm shelling out for rental on an engine hoist unless i really, really have to, dude!

Right, lovely day, time to get the downpipe off, and figure out whether i can get the head free (and old gaskets) before going off to the tip & shops, or whether i'll have to split the trip and go get a breaker first

....and then an arvo probably chocka full of tidying up and organising papers

DECAPITATED!

and without even needing a breaker bar - i'm really, really impressed by this cheap ass torque wrench

though who knows whether the rachet will still rachet when i'm putting it all back together?

PS dear christ on a moped, how rubbish is the haynes for all the essential little details? can't fault it for the main method at all, but stuff such as removing earth straps, disconnecting the main wiring loom connection, and depressurising / disconnecting the brake servo don't get a look in... til you try to lift it off and they want to come with!

easiest way by far (Also as andy would say a "pikey" method) is to use a 19mm spanner on the crankshaft bolt. This can be wedged against the antiroll bar, and (if long enough) this allows you to undo the topnut with relative ease using the timing belt. best have it set at 90° before or after TDC however so all the pistons are half way up the bores, although the amount of force required will be nowhere near the limits of a belt in good condition. It is also possible to torque up the bolt with a similar method (the compression of the engine was enough in my case though) Taking the head off is the easy bit, its when it all gets put back togethter when caution needs to be exercised.

My favoured method is to jam an allen key in the cam pulley against the front engine mount. Works on the G40 one quite nicely. Got to do the HG on the Mk2 in a couple of weeks after my exams, so will see which method appeals - the cambelt's newish so don't want to write that off, nor risk transmission damage.

well, those'll be good to keep in the archive for future reference, though i hope to never have to do this to a polo engine again

well.... maybe might still buckle and go all out for a G when i have, y'know, money

it's been easier than expected (ignoring this increasingly painful hole in my thumb) but still a pain in the tushkies

i thank all for their help so far. now i've gotta deal with removing the sump (which my 90 year old neighbour, recalling his days with reboring a land rover head (!!!) warns me might be a "bit more difficult" ) and doing the actual rings. oh and scraping all the muck off the head and block mating faces which will probably be a whole-day job in itself.

pics to come, i'm just getting round to having the time to get them posted up and briefly commented. think i'll make it a somewhat "different" members rides thread

Tahrey1043 wrote:pics to come, i'm just getting round to having the time to get them posted up and briefly commented. think i'll make it a somewhat "different" members rides thread

Excellent - looking forward to that

The sump on these engines is easy as pie to remove. Drain it, remove the exhaust downpipe, remove the clutch cover plate where the sump sticks into the gearbox housing, then just remove about 30 10mm bolts.

can i skip the downpipe and clutch parts?
(yeah im lazy)

dont know if i said - it would have come out in the pics anyway - but i wasnt able to get the downpipe off the manifold, i just unbolted the manifold from the head and used the slight give in the entire exhaust system to slip the head out past it.
The bolts are shagged, partially rusted on, and partially rusted out of shape, so that i cant get a socket/spanner to properly fit a couple of them, and even if i could it'll probably take half a can of WD40 and a blowtorch to shift them. might be a different story rear of the cat (remove the whole thing still bolted to the manifold... maybe replace for a decat inc manif? ) but i bet getting it back on after would be a mare.

hmmmm

anyway the pics will probably be wednesday now - still got a fair bit of typing to finish and tomorrow night may be pub night. (got lots of emails and phone calls to sort as well, may as well do them and the piccies all lumped together)

ste mk1lx wrote:

oh....... and what in heaven's name is a Woodroffe key?

don't worry about it I don't think the mk2 and mk3 used them its just haynes useing old info.

bit off topic but a woodruff key is a small metal piece made of "key-steel" (which is ultra-hard) that fits in a slot on one side of a shaft. It locates into the centre of the sprocket & stops it being able to spin round on the shaft.