I'm removing the DOHC form my SC2 right now. I was driving to work a few weeks ago. I left my driveway and was accelerating up the road when I heard or felt a pop under the hood, the car immediately died and I pushed it back to my driveway where it sat for a couple of weeks while I got my garage ready for what I figured was going to be a long project. Well it's underway now and I'll be looking to this forum for help as much as possible. I'll make postings as I can for the duration of the project.

The car isn't perfect cosmetically, with 180k on the clock, but over the last couple of years I have replaced a lot of the mechanical stuff, front end suspension, brakes, struts, control arms wheel bearings, CV shafts, tires, alignment, AC compressor, you get the idea, I can't bear the idea of scrapping it anyway.

 

Looking forward to seeing this. Post some pictures if you can throughout the way!

 

Today wasn't a good day for work, I put in about 13 hours at work today. Spent a lot of it tuning a main rotor for vibration control. Planning to finally get the saturn engine hanging tomorrow. I had trouble with the exhaust flange nuts! Soaked them with mousemilk for a cople of days and used a half inch drive 6 point 13mm socket and they came right off. I was afraid I was going to have to cut the dang things off with a torch, but mousmilk did the job. The rubber on the upper engine mount was almost completely torn away, looks like that,s on the order list. Based on the way it looked, I'm ordering all new mounts.

Any rhoughts about poly mounts?

Well off to sleep, lots to do tomorrow.

 

Ive heard good things about poly bushings for the s-cars.
Im sure someone who actually drives one has a better input though

 

Got A little more done today, still not quite to the point of having the engine hanging but very close, radiator is out, alternator is out, power steering pump is loose and set aside. being really careful bagging and tagging parts as she comes apart. I had my two of my sons turning wrenches today, but had a church event and a photo session (helping my wife with lighting) that took up a good chunk of the afternoon. Tomorrow is church in the morning then my youngest son's 11th birthday. He's getting his first rifle, a ruger 1022. I expect we'll be out shooting in the back yard a little bit. Maybe get back to the car in the evening.

 

Progress today, started late, and still at it taking a break to make this update. I thought I was ready to pull the engine and separated the block from the transmission when I realized that unlike my automatic SL that I did and engine remove and install before, My SC2 Manual has to come out with the engine, clearance is not there to get the clutch past the bell housing. so I put the top engine mount bolts back in and started working on pulling the suspension apart. In retrospect, I had not seen much online about Manual trans idiosyncrasies regarding engine removal issues. I've decided it's not as straightforward as others I've done in the past and have started using a manual like a good aircraft tech should.

The cool thing is that my son, even with his shiny new rifle, still was determined that we would have the engine hanging before he left for his mother's house. Alas, he had to leave about the time I discovered the impossible clearance issue. Another work week starts tomorrow, but I have some days off coming up, should be into the teardown by then. My boys will both be here for Christmas break and hopefully still exited about making the car go.

I seriously thinking about all of this work and that if I'm doing all of this, some upgrades are justified. Now what upgrades? Clutch? Definitely. Higher compression pistons? Boring over? milling, porting and polishing? hmm. Just praying my daughter's car doesn't break down before I'm done. It needs some front end suspension work...

Well back to the CV Shaft extraction, more tomorrow.

Thank god for my heated garage!

 

I'll take a few more and see if I can post them.

 

As far as mounts go, I've been OEM stock for 18 years on my mts for my 97 SC2.
In fact, have never needed/bothered to change any but the upper TAM (torque axis mount), which, on these cars, is a consumable. And I just rolled 250K. I'm sure the tranny mount is squashed, but until I have a reason to work down there and it's causing problems, the song remains the same.

From what I've read,
--Aftermarket normal rubber TAMs suck and transmit too much vibration to the cabin
--Poly bushings are great if you are absolutely fine with trading slightly enhanced handling for a harsher ride
--Twistec motor mounts are either the greatest thing since sliced bread or they shear right off from the forces exerted on them. It's hard to tell what the consensus is because you will never hear back from the positive reviewers whose Twistecs became TwistOffs 3 days after they praised it. Hell, don't know if they even still make them. Make sure you follow the proper procedure for the torque axis mount system. It is actually 2 mounts and he lower must be loosened while the top is tightened up.

 

Had two really rough days at work, VEERRRYYY long hours and a lot of miles on the sunfire dealing with a helicopter that was stuck away from home in bad weather. Playing taxi driver for pilots. Anyway, after Sunday's post I fished with the removal of the engine and transaxle as a unit. I got it to the point of hanging on the cherry picker. I wanted to go remove the trans and mount the block to the stand tonight but Its been a long day and I'm thinking break time.

 

First off, I am DUNN with using microsoft Edge for forum viewing. I've typed the following update twice and had the window inexplicably close on me each time before I finished the posts. Firefox is now my primary browser in window 10.

Anyway, back to work on the overhaul tonight. I separated the transaxle from the engine then mounted the engine on my stand.

I then removed the air conditioner brackets, the water pump and pulley, the thermostat and nipple, and the exhaust manifold.

Then I ran into some trouble with the balancer. I could not break that bolt loose with a 14 inch breaker bar. It isn't a left hand thread is it? I doubt it, but I've been wrong before.

I was very surprised how small the exhaust ports are! Lots of room for porting, but how much can I safely remove? If using the gasket as a guide, about an 1/8th inch all around. removing that much scares me! I'll look for threads on the subject here before I do anything with it. As I suspected, lots of antifreeze in the seam of the head. Pretty sure now that the blown head gasket is the correct diagnosis, but I'm going to do everything I can to freshen this engine while it's apart. Tired of burning oil.