After many months of inactivity on this project, I am putting back on top of my priority list, and I seem to make the time for it. Last weekend, over Thanksgiving, Gwyn and a bunch of friends moved it out of Amy's driveway in Beverly, put it on a trailer, and pull it to Gwyn's place. When I got there this morning, I got really excited to see it there, still up on the trailer that brought it over.
We left it up in the trailer to start working on it for now, as it is at a rather convenient height. Book in hand, I started doing all the preparation work to remove the engine:
- Disconnected the battery and removed it altogether. The surface where the battery was located got extremely bad rust, to the point that it disintegrated, and the battery was sinking through the floor.
- Drain oil. Placed a drain pan under the engine, removed the 19mm nut at the very bottom of the engine, and let it drain into the pan. Put the nut back in, once the drain completed.
- Electrical Disconnection. Removed the wires from the coil, and labeled them with tape and marker. Removed the coil. Unplugged the wire from the oil sensor, right in front of the distributor, and proceeded to remove the entire ignition system. Pulled the four plastic spark plug connectors off the spark plugs, labelled them according to the cylinder numbers, unclipped the distributor cap, and removed all these heavy duty cables and placed them in a bag. Removed the nut that holds the distributor in place, and removed the distributor itself, placing in it in the same bag as the coil and cables, and labelled this ignition. Placed a rag into the distributor hole. Went underneath the bus, found the starter in front of the engine on the left side, and disconnected the 4 cables going onto the positive terminal (rusty nut), and the single black one going to the negative terminal (push in).
- The heater blower that sits on top of the engine was already disconnected. Removed the hoses on either side going into the engine block, and removed the blower itself, hold in place by two bolts. Left the bolts back in so as not to lose them.
- Hoses. There were a few here and there, labeled some and disconnected all. Not sure now which is which and what's the purpose of each one, so just got them all out of the way.
- Carburetors. This van has a dual Weber carburetor set installed replacing the original one. First, disconnected the throttle cable. Disconnected the fuel line. Released the two nuts holding each carburetor and removed them both as a whole. Emptied the carburetors of remaining gasoline. The carburetors were hold in place by a gasket, that was loosened by gently tapping with a hammer and a piece of wood (so as not to damage the carburetors). Put rags into the carburetor holes in the engine block.
- Removed one piece of rear tin, held in place by several screws. Also, started to remove most of the screws for the other tin pieces at the front, but this was not supposed to happen in this step. The front tin pieces are still in place.
Here's where I ran out of time for the day, and left it here. It looks like I am a couple steps away from actually removing the engine from the bus, which hopefully will happen next time. Very exciting!
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