Engine Removal

As soon as I had decided to convert the car from auto to manual I knew that the easiest way was to take the engine out. Whilst it was out it was a good opportunity to strip, check and reassemble everything. The engine looked pretty clean when I bought the car and hinted at having been reconditioned, this later turned out to be because of a fibre cam great failure, there were still bits of it in the sump. The block had been cleaned and painted but that was about it, several horrors were still waiting to be found.... 

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This was the engine before conversion and removal, looks clean and nicely detailed...

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And the engine stripped of ancillaries, ready to come out, note lifting brackets bolted to the carb mounting studs on the inlet manifold, these were brackets (you need 4) bought from B&Q and a couple of long bolts. The weight of the whole engine and gearbox was swinging on the inlet manifold, it works a treat although it was a very nervous 30 minutes until the engine was out and on the garage floor. A clearer picture of the lifting brackets can be seen below.

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Total cost of brackets, bolts and chain to lift with was less than £15!! if anyone wants a set let me know.

A word on lifting.....

I spent a while on the scimitar Yahoo groups message board trying to work out the best way of lifting the engine. The problem with the Scimitar is that the very weighty Essex sits a long way back in the engine bay, couple this with the extended bodywork at the front of the car and your engine hoist has to have a long boom to reach over the body.
Cheap engine cranes can be had for as little as £150 but don't extend to the length you need, my solution was to attack from the side, lift the engine and push the crane sideways until the engine cleared the body. To do this you have to move axle stands mid way through the lift and spend what feels like an age with the engine swinging around above the car. There are no photos of this bit, I just wanted the engine out and on the floor before anything happened.

All went well and I now had an engine complete with automatic gearbox on my garage floor (picture shows gearbox removed but torque converter still attached) and a very big hole in the car where it used to be.

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Now to start stripping, rebuilding and converting to manual transmission...