This week’s update proves that the right tools make all the difference.

9 out of 10 dentists surveyed agreed that the power steering pulley needs to come off in order to remove the pump, which in turn makes it possible to remove the power steering/alternator bracket from the block. Here we see the wonderful puller kit I borrowed from Kragen. I highly recommend that the next time you need a weird tool you make a stop at the local CSK auto parts store and take advantage of their tool loan program. I slapped down a $42 refundable deposit and off I went.

The clamp that engages the groove in the pulley is made in two halves that are held together with a slip-on ring. Everything went together as advertised, and a quick twist with the air ratchet later…

…the pulley comes off. Like I said, the right tool saves a lot of time and bad words, especially on the Truck Where Nothing is Ever Easy.

Speaking of which, once you get the bolts that hold the pump to the bracket out, you then have to either remove the impossible-to-reach nuts that hold the bracket on the back of the pump, or do like I ended up doing and unscrew the line that goes into the back to give you enough room to work it out from behind there with the bracket still attached.

Sure is a lot less busy without that bracket and pump in place… Notice that I’m threading the bolts and nuts back in place so that I don’t have to remember where they go later.

Time to take a little break and work on stripping the lower intake manifold. Here, you can see the thick silicone sealant that everyone forgets to put back on when they switch intakes. It closes the gap between the bottom of the manifold and the edges of the lifter valley on both ends. And when I say thick, I mean it!

As an aside, I guess the union at the casting plant could only get "Presidents’ Day" off for their members, instead of Lincoln and Washington’s separate birthdays. Here’s my second-favorite haiku in their honor:

"Abraham Lincoln / Took a bullet in the brain / So you can sleep in"

Back to the engine stand. Before we take more stuff off the front of the motor, let’s take a moment to peer into the depths of the EGR port in the head. Yuck.

Hey! Where did the water pump go? In the trash can, that’s where. That piece of crap is getting replaced with a shiny new aluminum pump.

The A/C bracket held no surprises.

The turbo came off without too much drama, either. The only problem was getting three of the nuts off the studs with a box end wrench because there’s no room for a ratchet. This is another job that would be a huge pain in the ass with the engine still in the truck. Fortunately, it takes about 5 minutes with it on a stand.

If you look closely at the turbine inlet, you can see where it doesn’t quite match the exhaust manifold. While the benefits are debatable, I’m still going to match-port it while it’s apart because it will a) be easy and b) is another excuse to use the die grinder.

Here’s the manifold mount for the turbocharger. The hard line below it is the oil return that connects to the pan.

Next to come off was the crank pulley and balancer. Fortunately, Michael had a balancer puller, so once again the right tool makes it easy. The balancer looks iffy, so it will be replaced.

Sorry I don’t have a picture of the oil pan coming off. That was a mess, and I didn’t feel that juggling the grimy pan, air ratchet, and camera was a good idea. Suffice it to say that in a perfect world, you shouldn’t need three different sizes of socket to get an oil pan off.

Anyway, once I dropped the pan, the timing cover could be removed.

You’ll remember that what started all this was a loud knocking sound coming from the bottom end of the engine. With the engine flipped over on the stand, Michael wanted to take a peek at the bearings. Here’s a rod cap removed at random. I don’t have any experience at these sort of things, but Michael said he was surprised at how good it looked for 150k+ miles. There aren’t any markings on the bearing caps that would imply it’s been reworked, though,so the only conclusion is that synthetic oil and frequent changes really do reduce wear.

While he was poking around, he pulled a main cap too. In his opinion, no problems there, either. Though we’re going to have to pull them all to be sure, an external examination for slop led Michael to guess that the noise must be a cracked piston rather than a problem with the rotating assembly. In any case, we’ll keep looking until we find what was wrong. I wouldn’t want to put the new motor together without knowing what killed this one.

So the pile of parts on the floor gets larger. Now, there’s really nothing left to do but send off the parts that Jerry needs and spend the time waiting for the new motor to come back by cleaning up the stuff that will be reused and ordering replacements for the things that won’t. That, and scrubbing out the engine bay so that Michael doesn’t have a fit - he’s used to working on nice clean race cars and will be much happier once everything is "sanitized".