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| Pulling The Engine |
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Alright, so you thought you were all cool with your sweet Saturn. Ohhhhhh, you're sooo aweesssummmmmm!!! Holy balls, so sweet. And then it shuts off. Damn...it burned all the oil. Damn, my oil cooler leaked all the oil out. Damn, I revved it to 99999RPM at 92847psi. Shiiiiit. Whatever the case, you blew it up. Now it's time to try something new. You're going to pull out the engine, either to rebuildit or to swap in a new one. This article will cover only the pulling process. Hopefully, in a short while, a sorta-complete engine rebuilding article will also be available. We shall see. Anyhoo, onto the pull. First step, open the stopcock on the bottom left corner of the radiator and drain out all the coolant. Next, use a 14mm wrench on the serpentine belt tensioner and take off the belt.
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Once the belt is off, use a 10mm deep socket to remove the three (or in my case...two) bolts holding the power steering pump. The only way to get to those bolts is to stick the wrench through the holes in the power steering pump pulley. It's fucking irritating, but it's doable. After the pump is loose from the engine, take the battery bracket, battery, and battery tray out. The tray is pretty obvious, except for the two bolts that are in the wheelwell to the right of the tray. Next, remove all of the intake piping (or intercooler pipes), as well as any vacuum lines off of the intake manifold or intake pipes.
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Now, remove the exhaust manifold bolts going to the head, as well as those connecting the manifold to whatever sort of downpipe you have. In my case, my "exhaust manifold" came off all in one big chunk...schweeeeeetay. After that's done, I went back up near the firewall and removed the two 10mm bolts holding on the throttle cable bracket, as well as the cable itself. While you're up there, remove the injector harnesses. Also, take out the five 15mm bolts holding the TAM to the frame and engine.
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Then, jack up the car on both sides and get it up on jackstands. Take the wheels off, and you're ready to try your hand on the axle nuts. One on each side, 30mm nuts of fury. Borrow the 1/2" drive, 30mm socket from Autozone for the day. Many people use giant breaker bars and pipes for levers to break them loose. I wanted to see if I could just pull it, though, because I'm an asshole. Anyways, it worked. Set it up so you're pulling the 1/2" drive wratchet instead of pushing it, use both hands, and just fucking pull it. If you aren't a pussy, it'll come off. Good luck, bitches. While you're at it, if your rotors are even NEARLY as bad as mine are, you might consider doing a brake job while you're at it.
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Now, remove the two bolts holding the struts to the hub, or whatever it's called. Once the hub is loose from the strut, it's time to break the axle out of the middle of the hub. Look behind the rotor area to the back of the hub, and put a pry bar in the proper gap, as seen in this picture. It may help to bang a couple times on the end of the axle, in the direction of the hub, where the nut came off of, with a hammer or something. This banging might break the axle loose a bit from the hub and allow the prying to go a little easier. When the axle is out of the hub, manhandle it loose of the hub area and into approximately this position. To get the other end of the axle free, take a look at this picture and stick the pry bar into the gap where my finger is pointing. In the picture, however, the gap is already pryed open somewhat, so it wont be so obvious when you look for it. Anyways, just pry on it a bit and it'll pop out pretty easily. At this point, if you haven't already, drain the tranny fluid. It can be drained out of a bolt hole on the very bottom of the tranny. The correct bolt is circled in this picture. To remove the other axle, it's slightly different, but just pry at the places that looks the same, and it'll come out the same way. The driver's side will come out of the tranny, and the passenger's side will come out of the output shaft or intermediate shaft or whatever it's called. It'll all make sense when you get at it.
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Now, two more main mechanical-type things to do before the pull. First, take out the driver's side wheel well plastic guards and look right below the end of the tranny, where it comes into contact with the frame. You'll see what you see to the right, which is the tranny mount. Take out the two 10mm bolts holding the tranny and mount in place, as shown in the picture. Also, remove the hood by taking out either the top two or bottom two bolts on each side of the hood, as shown here.
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Alright...at this point, the car will look about as you see to the right. Before you take the next step and remove the two dogbone mounts, you must now hook up the engine crane to the pulling mounts. There are two such hookup points...one directly to the right of the head, next to the EGR solenoid, and the other right above and to the left of the AC compressor. To connect the engine hoist, use the bolts and nuts taken out of the hub to strut brackets. They were a PERFECT fit on the hoist I used, but yours may be different. Raise the hoist up just enough to take the slack out of the chains attached to the engine, and take out the two dogbone mounts. One mount is located right under the front part of the battery tray, and the other is located inside the passenger's side wheel well, underneath the crank pulley. The bolt should be 13mm or 15mm (or like 52mm if you have a fucked up engine like mine).
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When the mounts are out, disconnect every fucking connector you can find from the engine. The coil pack harness(es) (seen to the right), IAT, TPS, IAC, ECTS, WTFMATEBBQONEONEONE, etc. Also, disconnect the fuel rail from the fuel line by whatever method suits your car, separate the FPR from the fuel rail if you have a return fuel system, and unclip the shifter cables from the tranny. They're held to the tranny by clips like these. You can pull the smaller ones off with your fingers, and the bigger ones can be pryed off with a screw driver if you can't get them off by hand. The levers on the tranny to which the cables are connected are located towards the back of the engine bay, to the right of the engine. Just look for levers with...oh you know...cables attached to them. You'll find them alright. If you can't, you're a dumbass. Whatever...so I forgot to take a picture and I can't do it right now...fuck it.
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Anyhooz...next step is to take out the engine. If your hoist has a load leveler, twist it so the tranny end is as low as it can go. Then, start lifting the engine out of the bay, making sure to disconnect random vacuum and electrical lines as you see that you forgot to remove. There are a LOT on top and to the side of the intake manifold that I haven't mentioned, including the vacuum booster, a coolant line, a bunch of electrical harnesses on the back of the block, and the starter wires. Just be careful and go slowly. Try not to fuck anything up too badly. By the way, that's Josh in the picture to the right. He helped immensely in getting the engine out successfully, so thanks, homieslicer. Once the engine is excised, check out the soon-to-exist (or already existant) tutorials on engine disassembly and reassembly.
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