Around Waynos house

[wayno]

Well that worked out well, I postponed the job I had these morning because the customer said it rained there and I don't want to walk on his dirty tile roof when it is wet, so I decided to try and make that tool I need to remove the yokes from the trans-axle case.
I made it out of 5/32" thick aluminum flat plate stock I had a piece left of, you can see in the first photo that half of it is a dark color, that is the untouched part, where it is aluminum color is where I ground the plate into a wedge, the opened end is just slightly over a 1/16" thick, only an inch and a half of the ends are wedge shaped, so an 1/8" is enough to release the yokes from the trans-axle case.





Here is the CV joint/yoke I am trying to slide out of the case that is held in by a snap ring.





And here is the tool I made in position.



And here it is released.



There is not enough room to actually pull the yokes out this way without possibly having the bearings inside fall out of position so I will leave them in position till I lift the engine a few inches, then I will release them one at a time and duct tape them so they don't fall apart one at a time, then the engine should come right out after removing the speedo drive cable from the trans-axle, it is very hard to access and this is how/when they say to pull it when pulling the engine.

I really didn't think the yoke was going to release this easy, but I have yet to get to the flywheel which from what I have been told is a major bitch to get off the tapered shaft it is mounted on, I suspect one cannot just start hitting it with a sledge as it is after all mounted on the crank, I certainly do not want to bust/break/ruin the crank, that has a special tool to release it also.

[DRIVEN]

I wouldn't expect the joint to come apart on one of those any more than any other CV axle. Duct tape shouldn't matter. This actually seems like an overcomplicated shortcut. Is it possible to pop the knuckle loose and just swing the axle out of the transmission?

[wayno]

The yokes are just like the drive line yoke that the Datsun transmissions have, except there are 2 of them coming out the sides, it was a lot easier to lift the engine up a few inches and release the CV joint yokes than it would be to jack up the front of the car off the ramps and put it on stands, then remove the wheels, then bust loose the upper ball joints to lean the assemblies away from the trans-axle, plus the book says one has to remove bump stops also, over all it is a pain to remove these engines in these cars.
I got it out today and the rear main seal has been ordered and is supposed to be here Wednesday, this car has some weird stuff like the clutch cover, I so far have not been able to get it off the flywheel, the British sports car guy looked at it also and had very little to say, he had no idea how to get it apart either, but I got the flywheel off which was easy, and I got the seal out, I drilled a hole in one side and put a screw in it and pulled it out.
Next I need to clean everything up, when a p[art goes in it is going to be clean, it may not look new, but it will be clean.
The engine out


The engine compartment


The CV Joints hanging out in the open


It was not easy to get out, I had to cut the header off where it joined the rest of the exhaust system, I will add a joint there of some kind of my making, I had to get the header out of the way as there is just not enough room in the engine compartment unless I remove the complete power brake assembly/brake master, I prefer not having to bleed the brakes, the fuel pump is also in the way but I got the header past it some how.

[DRIVEN]

That is a bit odd. Admittedly, I've never worked on one of those. That's just how I usually attack a fwd car. Besides, you'll need a way to get the inner joints to pop back past those C-clips when you go back together. Didn't realize those were so different.

[wayno]

I already released the one when I tested the tool I made and it popped right back in to where I had to use the tool to release it again, but getting them yokes back into the trans-axle while lowering the engine/trans-axle back in might be tricky.
I will clean the engine bay and engine/parts over the next few days.

[wayno]

I made some progress today, it's not a great paint job, but at least I taped off the aluminum, head is black heat resistant paint, the block is just red paint close to what it had before, not the exact color, but close.





I need some advise, my firewall has this shitty looking foam(sound deadening?), I want to just remove it as it looks like crap, what would you guys do, you have a decent alternative?





I need to figure out the foam before I clean the engine bay.

[DRIVEN]

Is it this? https://www.minimania.com/part/CZH798/S ... ini-Cooper

[wayno]

It doesn't really look like my firewall above the vertical part of the firewall but that doesn't mean it's not the right part, I have a low spot in the middle but no low spots on the sides.
Mine does have what appears to be a coating on it in a few places, but it almost looks like the foam underneath now, most of that coating is gone now and as you can see in the photos the foam is falling apart, it looks bad to me.

I also have what appears to be a lot of extra wiring that the car didn't come with, inline fuses hanging out in the open, wires spliced into other wires at the front core support that likely all are about the 4 fog lights that were added to the car in the past, I don't want to remove the fog lights as I think they look good there and they appear to be on a lot of Mini's, I personally think the wires are a little on the small side, but I see no use for them other than looks so I will not be doing anything except trying to clean them up.

I think I also need a front crank seal, the engine mount below that area was soaked with oil.

[jtinluvr]

Definitely clean up the wiring. Can be as simple as wrapping in electrical tape. Give the buyer less things to question. On the firewall, I would remove that stuff and see about having a rattle can mixed up that matches the color as close as possible. Im sure the insulation is there to try and quiet the engine noise inside the car but if your selling it you wouldn’t care and it would look so much nicer under the hood. Probably doesn’t make that big a difference anyways.

[wayno]

The car was originally green, just not quite as dark of a green as the exterior.
I will likely remove that crap tomorrow and see what it looks like underneath, I also need to really clean the area under the front engine pulley, another clue the front seal was bad also.

[DRIVEN]

I still vote for new insulation. Especially if it's only $30.

[wayno]

That insulation in that link is a 1/2" thick, the product on my firewall is over 7/8" thick without the black outer layer, but I ordered one anyway, we shall see how long it takes to get here.

[wayno]

I removed the insulation this morning, it had to be broken up/ripped apart because some stuff was mounted on top of it like the wiper motor and brake assembly.





The foam piece, it really doesn't look much like the one in the photo that is coming.



Here is the strap that holds the wiper motor on.



Here is a spot that had a lot of rust, the bracket, bolts sticking up and the clutch master housing/reservoir looked bad, so bad I thought about trying to remove them, but I could not get to the inside bolt heads so I sand blasted all of it in position and then covered it with POR15, after I pressure wash the engine compartment I will likely paint almost everything green that is black in this photo.



Then I cleaned up the header and then painted it with that black paint high heat paint they sell for barbecues.



I have no work tomorrow so I will likely pressure wash it then and let it dry for a day and then go to Bob's paint land for a rattle can of British Racing Green paint, I am hoping not to paint much at all, maybe most the dirt will come off and leave the paint, I am looking for something close, matching it and putting it in a rattle can is very expensive, when the hood is up not much is there to see except the engine.
The engine bay wiring is a rats nest, I didn't plan on pressure washing it so my wires are labeled with tape and paper, the water will likely destroy the labels.

[wayno]

I pressure washed the engine compartment a couple days ago with my little pressure washer that doesn't have as much pressure, since then I have been waiting for it to dry out doing little stuff, I also am waiting for that rear seal, everywhere that the paint had pealed/came off in the engine compartment and started rusting I hit with POR15.
I figured out that the little pieces of what looked like corrugated rubber were actually the rack and pinion seal ends that keep the dirt off the shafts, they stretch and compress as one turns the steering wheel, not sure what I am going to do about that yet as I would have to take the steering apart, O may just tell the next owner that needs to be done as I don't drive this in the rain, pressure washing it is the wettest it has gotten in the engine compartment/under side since I have owned it.
I also started looking at the front seal as it was oil soaked under it in that area, well I pulled the timing chain cover off and realized that there was no seal between the block and the cover, whoever had put this cover on last had just used that blue shit(non-hardening) that squeezed out both sides, it really had quite a bit of that shit on there and it was very easy to remove as it was oil soaked, so I made a gasket for the cover out of a cereal box material and used a thin coat of that form a gasket brown shit(fast drying/hard setting), it didn't squeeze out the side on the outside so it don't look like crap, but I can see a little of it so I am hoping this fixes the issue as I don't think it was the front pulley seal that was leaking anymore.





Tomorrow I will likely use the green paint I bought to cover the POR15 I applied, I am not going to paint the whole firewall as too much would have to be removed and cause too much work for the result, since I have that firewall material coming and it will likely hide everything in sight except the clutch master area, I will paint that green.
I also figured out my exhaust, I made a pipe that mounts to the header firmly, it slides onto the existing pipe in back of the cut I made to remove the header so I could get the engine out, I will put it on the pipe, install the header on the engine, then slide the pipe forward onto the header, now getting it as far onto the header as I can on the bench might become an issue, I may have to put an exhaust clamp onto it a ways back and then lightly hammer it onto the header, the other end is not as tight, I may have to figure something out for that end if it leaks although my muffler is not really much of a muffler, it is a straight thru muffler that is more for looks than muffling the exhaust.





I really doubt I could hear an exhaust leak unless it is a really bad leak.

[wayno]

By the way I believe this is the clip that holds the yoke in on both sides, you can see it better in the second photo, it's in that groove on the shaft.

[DRIVEN]

Yes, that's the clip. Careful not to roll it.

[wayno]

What do you mean "roll it"?

[wayno]

I cleaned up the wiring today, but I did it without the engine in the car, so I don't know if all the wires will reach now.
All the wires sticking out in the middle are all that go to the engine, they all go to different places on the side of the engine.



There are other wires in the photo above like the red ones running along the bottom of the front opening that are zip-tied in position where they are, you can see them in the photo, they are for the amber fog lights, but they will be hard to see once the car is put back together.

[DRIVEN]

What do you mean "roll it"?

See how in the 2nd pic the end of the clip is above and behind the groove. Sometimes the end can be pushed out while the rest stays in the groove causing only partial engagement. Then it gets stuck. Ask me how I know.

Sometimes it's helpful to use heavy grease to "float" or center the C-clip in the groove before you slide the axle all the way home.

[wayno]

OK, I understand what you are saying, I adjusted the clip in that second photo so it could be seen better, the first photo is how it normally is(in the groove).
I can see when installing the yokes it may take a little finesse to get the clips inside the barrel of the yoke, so forcing them in is not an option.

Once I pulled the yokes all the way out I didn't try to put either back in as the engine was raised a few inches and the goal was to remove the engine.
I am still waiting for the rear seal, but tomorrow I need to paint the spots I put POR15 on, only then will I be ready to install the engine.