Engine & Transmission Removal... ...January 25, 2009
I finally had an idle weekend to start working on my corvette. I purchased an 8k mile stock LS1 longblock a month ago, it's just been sitting in the shop waiting for me to install it. The car had been sitting under a car cover doing nothing for four months as well! I had been curious all this time to figure out what the bottom end knock was - it felt good to finally have some closure today. I also had to pull out the transmission - on a test drive I found out there was no sixth gear. I'm not too worried about it, I will be subletting the transmission rebuild to Tick Performance, so I know it's in good hands.
Saturday morning I wasted no time getting down to business. I took a quick video of the noise, for future reference. I decided to pull out the engine and the rest of the drivetrain separately, to make the task a little less daunting. In hind sight I should have pulled out the trans/rear end first, instead of the other way around. Not that big of a deal, but it was kind of a pain to deal with the input shaft getting hung up on the way out. I took the engine out the bottom; having a lift makes it go a lot faster. It did take longer than dropping the engine out of my formula, but still wasn't that bad of a job.
Click on thumbnails for larger pics!
After dropping the engine out, I was dying to tear it apart. I took off the heads first, and all of the pistons looked decent.
I stuck it on the engine stand and flipped it over to have a look at the bottom end. That's when I discovered that cylinder 6 spun a rod bearing. It was pretty toasted. Some of the other bearings didn't look too hot either, I would guess from the trash that the #6 bearing sent through the engine. I found a shard of bearing in my oil pickup screen, as well as in the very bottom corner of the oil pan. Besides that though, the oil filter was surprisingly clean when cut apart.
The crank journal is pretty marred on #6. I haven't decided what to do with this engine, I will either sell it for parts or have it freshened up at a machine shop and sell it assembled. I don't really have a use for it as of now, since I have the lower mile LS1 to install. I wrapped it up in plastic and stuck it in the parts room for now. I began swapping components over to my new LS1, such as the windage tray, rockers/pushrods, a/c, etc. I will need a few gaskets and random parts to complete the install, which I hope to have in this week.
Sunday I pulled out the transmission & rearend...the car is completely naked underneath now. I hope to get it put back together quickly so I can get it on the road soon!
