mk1 gti engine removal advice

Hello there,

I am posting on behalf of a friend with no internet access, who needs to replace the big end and main bearing on his mk1.

Basically he's never removed the engine before but he's been doing some research on it and wants to do it on thursday, he's also got a 150 kg engine crane hired.

Since my mechanical knowledge is very limited at best and I'll be the only person on hand to help we figured any advice that we could get would be appreciated!

Anyway he provided some more info on his car:
It's a 1988 f reg mk1 convertable , 1.8 k-jet mechanical injection
engine code is dx (he thinks)

He's unsure as to weather he will need to remove the entire engine (as the haynes manual tells him) , and wonders if there might be another way to do it…

Basically we could just do with some hindsight from somebody who has done this before, any unexcepted problems or pitfalls?
Hope this isnt too vague, thanks in advance for any help

I'll try my best to fill you in. The disconnections you need to make are all quite simple using a reasonable set of tools. The ones you might struggle with, are the CV joints (M8 12 spline tool and various lengths of extension bar needed) and the exhaust clamp, if its a C type clamp. A tip on this, is to use a U shaped exhaust clamp with the clamp part outside the nuts, to force spread the C clamps apart, then its easy.

I've always split the gearbox from the engine, then removed the gearbox from below and the engine (using the crane) from above. If you use thick cardboard, or wooden boards at the sides and front, you can save scratching the paintwork.

While its out, its worth doing these jobs too:

Replace steering UJ gaitor (most certainly cooked/broken up)
Clean out and repack the CVJs
Take a good look at the clutch and unless its newish, replace it.

Paul C's advice is excellent as always,
Haynes manual is pretty good on engine removal - certainly I used it the first couple of times..
Big Ends and most main bearing shells can, of course, be removed and replaced from below without removing engine - but not if you want to examine the crankshaft and have it machined…
Also may be worth considering a replacement engine if he's doing these major engine out jobs…or maybe doing complete overhaul on his engine while on the bench - valve stem oil seals and piston rings perhaps,,, 8O

hey thanks allot for the advise guys , will be having a go at this shortly. Hopefully it should all go smoothly.

 :mrgreen:

alright , we've managed to get the engine and gearbox removed (and now fully understand the difficulty of removing the exhaust clamps!). The advice from this forum was certainly useful . Next job is to remove the clutch (and check it over as oldfart suggested), we also discovered some of the engine mounts were in a fairly bad state. Then we need to take the crankshaft to pieces and get it all back together. One of our concerns at this stage is getting the C-clamps that we removed from the exhaust back together when re-assembling everything.

As always any sage advice would be appreciated..

 
 :mrgreen:

iamatool said

alright , we've managed to get the engine and gearbox removed (and now fully understand the difficulty of removing the exhaust clamps!). The advice from this forum was certainly useful . Next job is to remove the clutch (and check it over as oldfart suggested), we also discovered some of the engine mounts were in a fairly bad state. Then we need to take the crankshaft to pieces and get it all back together. One of our concerns at this stage is getting the C-clamps that we removed from the exhaust back together when re-assembling everything.

As always any sage advice would be appreciated..

 
 :mrgreen:

Exhaust clamp trick!