I took the plunge - well the engine did!

[steve.pritchard146]

Brief progress update on my 3.8S auto

In readiness and out of necessity for repairs to the front of the RH chassis leg, front cross member, braces etc I dropped the engine yesterday. I had previously taken the head off - a story for another day….

As our garage is low roofed so I felt I had little choice but to drop it down - the car has been up axle stands for a good while whilst I pondered my approach to the front body restorations. I dropped the front suspension a few weeks ago and have ordered the repair section for the chassis which starts somewhere further back from the engine mount- I’m not sure exactly where as it’s not arrived from Martin Robey yet.

I;m sure it’s the same for everyone that whenever you plan to do something nothing quite goes right!

Having worked out last year that my engine crane was not really long enough when I replaced our defender engine, an extra 2 inches reach would have made a massive difference ! Sure enough when putting the arm over the 3.8S it didn’t ‘appear’ to reach far enough. I actually ordered a longer lifting arm, well the steel box section to make one, but when I went to drill the holes I discovered the chuck in my pillar drill was not large enough for the drill bit - I duly ordered a new chuck, but lacked the patience to wait for it to arrive - so back to the original hoist arm.

I decided that if I braced the engine from underneath with a pair of trolley jacks there was a low chance of the engine suddenly shifting forward if the arm proved to be too short.

So given the position following previous dismantling all I needed to do was :
1. Remove the plate from the bottom of the car below the prop shaft to gearbox and holding the rear gearbox stabiliser and gearbox support bracket
2. Remove the chassis to engine mount bolts (4 each side, 2 long ones through the chassis, 2 short)
3. Disconnect the gear select cable form the lower side of the gearbox
4. Remove the gearbox cable selector support bracket - no idea where that was, not visible at all
5. Remove the speedo cable drive from the back of the gearbox
6. Lower the engine

I figured an hour should do it…..

At this point I should probably add that as far as I can tell the last time the car was driven was around 1978/79 as I have a large collection of tax disks and a little history. So there is much work to do, but in general the overall condition is not ‘too bad’ and hopefully remains within my capabilities (and budget!)

As mentioned the car is on axle stands with rear wheels on the ground however I have not to date had to do anything underneath and I realised yesterday that I was very uncomfortable with the two axles stands holding the car up from a section of chassis that whilst looking good on the outside is most likely to have rusted on the inside….
So I broke out 2 more pairs of axle stands which I placed underneath in various places to try to give more security - but still wasn’t really happy under there.

So in a seemingly random order:

1. The first three retaining plate bolts came undone easily, the fourth broke free the welded nut inside the car but undid sufficiently that I was able to rotate the plate out of the way and remove the big stabilising spring. Interestingly the manual suggested there were 6 bolts but there were only 4 with no obvious place for another 2

The prop shaft U/J was a pain and necessitated sticking a trolley Jack under the rear suspension so I could turn a road wheel to rotate the joint.
But this U/J nuts with nyloc and rust took forever to undo and my arms and shoulders were on fire at the end.

There was also mention of a rear gearbox support bracket - which there was no sign of, and no sign of where it might go - something to investigate at a later stage.

5. Whilst I was under the car the speedo drive was in easy reach but I could not turn it, even with mole grips& plus gas. There appeared to be sufficient slack that I judged it not to be an immediate problem.

3. The gear select cable came off the side of the gearbox easily (hurrah)

4. Gearbox cable selector bracket - no sign of this - although peering up from the bottom on the passenger side there were signs that the select cable went through a bracket…… to be considered later…

2 The engine mounting bolts were all slackened and appeared that they were going to come free so I applied the two trolley jacks to release the engine and gearbox weight and applied the sling and positioned the crane.

The moment of truth, I gingerly undid all 8 bolts and removed they whilst tweaking the jacks and engine crane to ensure no sudden movements.


It was a bit anti-climatic as nothing happened once the bolts were removed - it appeared with jacks and crane I had perfectly balanced everything so now to try lowering whilst checking on/for the cables I hadn’t freed.

The engine began to drop very smoothly with the only pain being the auto-transmission dipstick/tube which is extremely rigid and fouled on the accelerator pedal linkage and required some manaouvering.

Once I’d dropped about 12 inches I could see at the back of the bell housing the bracket and ‘stretched’ selector cable. Seeing and accessing were two different things! I ended up lying across the front wing and over the top of the engine to reach back to free the cable and bracket. I know reassembly is a good while away (years?) but I need to work out the proper method for reattaching the cable as if the cylinder head and cam covers had been in place I would have struggled to reach.

The engine is now sitting on the floor below the engine bay on a pair of wheel trolleys whilst I work out how to disconnect the speedo cable, and also how to get it from under - I’ve either got to tip it over of lift the car 10 inches..

[steve.pritchard146]

Well I managed to get the front of the car a foot higher and with the application of a Dremel the speedo cable is off so engine and gearbox are now tucked away until their turn- now no excuses for welding at the front!

I think my next step is to construct a more secure platform to hold the car up I’m thinking in addition to the axle stands, a 3’sq fence post across the chassis members on breeze block piers- has anyone any good experience of supporting a vehicle with the front high in the air?
Whilst I have wheel chocks in place I’m conscious that they are not foolproof and safety needs to be first.

All thoughts welcome