Last night I finally liberated Sunshine’s wiring harness. In order to get it out, I had to take out a lot of the dash and pretty much all of the heating system. It was definitely more work than I had anticipated, but at least now I can properly clean and repair it. While I’m doing that, I will also clean out the engine compartment, make a few minor repairs in there, get rid of some small areas of surface rust and finally repaint it before the new motor gets put in.

The old motor is out of Sushine! With my dad’s help, last night we got it out. It was a bit tricky with the crank pulley and the water pump still on (I knew I should have pulled those), but we managed.

The easy part of the project is over. The priorities now are to get the wiring harness out of the car, clean, repair it and reinstall it, clean, repair and paint the engine compartment, and get the car ready to receive the new motor.

I’m still working on clearing out Sunshine’s engine compartment, and it’s coming along pretty well. I’m removing the wiring harness so I can make repairs to it and clean it. It really needs it, since some of the connectors are messed up or broken and previous owners did some pretty awful repairs to it. I’m surprised the car ran as well as it did…or even at all, to be honest.

The harness is all freed up from the engine compartment except for where it goes through the firewall on the passenger side. I wasn’t sure what I should do there until I asked the guys on the turbo-mopar forum. Apparently the connector is inside the car, so all I have to do is get in there, remove the kick panel and disconnect it. Too bad I didn’t know that before I stopped for the day. Oh well. I got a lot done anyway.

Sorry, no progress photos this time. I don’t really have anything exciting to show right now.

Last night I pulled the fan, radiator and intercooler, alternator and power steering pump, then stopped for the night because my back was killing me from being hunched over for so long. Anyway, there’s not much left that I need to do in order to get the motor out:

It looks like more of a mess than it really is, trust me. Although, speaking of messes, I did drench myself in antifreeze after accidentally bumping into the bin full of it with my creeper. That was fun.

Also, out of curiosity I checked the S/N on the block. Unsurprisingly, it’s not even close to the car’s VIN:

It’s also been painted heavily with brush, like some other things on this car.

I bought a shop crane and engine stand last night. My friend Paul helped me get them home and assisted me in assembling the shop crane since it’s too heavy for me to do myself. I wish I didn’t have to buy one, but I don’t have any beams in this garage to hang a chain hoist from, so this is what I have to do. Also, I used to have an engine stand, but I think it’s in NJ with the MGs. That was relatively cheap anyway.

It’s going to be a tight squeeze with the shop crane in my little garage, but I think it’ll be ok. Also, I think I’m going to have to move the Shelby as far as I can to one side of the garage in order to take delivery of the new motor. I have a bit of time before I have to do that, though.

Once I get the old motor out, I plan on pushing the Shelby outside and giving the engine compartment a good cleaning. It definitely needs it. Hopefully I’ll get a warm day to do that.

Last night I cleaned the carbon from the tops of the pistons, using aerosol Sea Foam, a scotchbrite pad and a rag, so I could examine the pistons. They came out pretty clean, but piston #1 has a small ding on it (hard to see in this photo…sorry I forgot to take a picture of it after I cleaned it):

…and piston #3 is damaged as well:

Piston #3 also had the heaviest coating of carbon on it. I wouldn’t have seen the damage (except for the obvious part by the “C”) if I hadn’t removed the carbon. So, what started out as a simple turbo rebuild has turned into something much bigger (and much more expensive). =(

I finally had time to disassemble the head-intake-exhaust manifold-turbo assembly last night after having it on the bench for a few days. Everything came apart without much fuss, though I couldn’t imagine doing any of it with the whole assembly still on the car. It was definitely easier to pull the head with everything still attached.

The good: The turbo assembly seems to be in good shape. There is a fairly large amount of radial play in the compressor-turbine shaft, but no noticeable axial play, and no oil in the compressor housing. I also didn’t see any cracks or damage of any sort on the whole assembly. So, it should be fine with a rebuild.

The bad: There’s more cracks in the head. There’s cracks in the small water passages and more alarmingly, cracks leading from one of the valves to the outside of the combustion chamber, on all cylinders. See below:

Also, the intake manifold has been sloppily ported between the mating halves. Luckily, the rest of the intake manifold has not been ported, nor has anything else. Also note the lovely homemade gasket. I should be able to smooth these out:

So, the long and short of it is that I’m looking at replacing the head now as well as having the turbo rebuilt. I kind of had a feeling this was going to happen. Stay tuned, things should start to get interesting from here on out!

You guys will be pleased to know that I pulled Sunshine’s head off the other day. Unfortunately, it’s too heavy/awkward for me to lift out of the engine compartment myself with the intake manifold, exhaust manifold, and turbo still attached. So, a friend is going to give me a hand with it tomorrow. I can’t wait to get it out and on the bench so I can see what I have to work with. Will the manifolds and head already be ported? Does the head have a valve job? I’ll see soon enough.

So far the Shelby has been much easier to work on than my Focus. I don’t know if it’s because it has such low miles on it and has spent so much time indoors or if it’s just because I have more room to work with in the engine compartment…or both. No fasteners have been frozen (knock on wood) or stripped. The only difficulty I had so far was figuring out what to use as a jacking point to raise the car high enough to put on stands, and getting the valve cover off. It was nearly glued in place with form-a-gasket (instead of silicone) so it was really difficult to remove. The throttle body is also stuck in place on the intake manifold. I have to figure out how to get it to separate without damaging anything.

Four days of work in 1:20. Here’s a time lapse video I took of all four days I worked on my GT when I was in NJ. Here’s what I got done: rebuilt the carburetors, changed all the hoses, changed the fan belt, replaced the distributor cap, rotor, wires and spark plugs, removed the pedal box and both master cylinders and reconditioned and painted the pedal box and cover (as well as some other things), and disassembled one of the rear brakes. Unfortunately, I had to leave things half-finished (which I hate doing) because I needed to leave early to avoid the hurricane. I don’t think I did too badly though, considering I did all of this by myself and I haven’t worked on the car in 20 years.

It figures a hurricane would hit the week I’m in NJ working on my car =(