Disassembling the Bottom End
At this point there was just a short block left. We took some time making a crankshaft lock, so we could break loose the crankshaft pulley bolt. Then we
pulled the harmonic balancer. It took a quick internet search to find out that you use a gear puller to get off a camshaft gear (duh) and after that it went quickly. I took these reference
shots so I could figure out how the oil slinger and the lock washer go back on later. It doesn't look like it's obvious. Oh yeah, and, I had to whack the oil filler tube with my rubber mallet
to get it loose.
And now some shots of how the freeze plugs screw in. After that I popped out the freeze plugs. and found a lot of sand in there. But not enough to plug things up.
Finally it was time for the rod bearings. They were all worn. Most of them had a groove running around the center. Most of them were worn to the copper, too. Number 7, which sounded like the
rod knock was coming from, had the most copper showing. No pictures. Then the mains. They all had a groove around the middle also, right in line with the oil hole. None of the bearings looked
really bad, though, more like they had been running in a mixture of oil and water and sand.
Once the block was bare we put a worklight under it trying to find the pinhole. I saw daylight, and picked at it, and suddenly I had a bigger hole in the cylinder wall. I got a good photo of
it here.
And an artistic one:
