Getting an engine in or out safely and cheaply

[Turbo-Brown]

Don't know if anybody'd be interested, but the subject comes up every once in a while of how to get an engine out (or in) and as I was taking the engine out of one of my cars today and experimenting with a safe and easy method of removal, I borrowed a camera to document the procedure.

Anyone want me to do a tech article?

The basic premise is that you jack the car up onto axle stands, replace the front subframe bolts with four lenths of studding (M10x1.5) and then just wind the whole lot to the ground in your own time with just a jack under the gearbox to stop that from falling down.

Easy to do on your own, safe as nothing can suddenly fall and if the weather turns nasty you can just leave it for another day, and cheap as the axle stands only cost about £20 and the studding around £3.60

Can't see any reason why you couldn't use the same method in reverse to reinstall an engine too.

If anyone's interested I'll write it up with the piccies.

[Andy335Touring]

Nice idea, better than struggling with a jack under the subfame which i luckily managed to do on my own.

Mind, i wimped out when putting the engine back in as i hired a crane.

[DanThe]

Good plan but I dont fancy all that spanner work

[m-dtech]

i just use this method..........

[Speedtouch]

Sounds cool Turbo-Brown, go for it dude! I've only ever done Morris Minor, MGB and Citroen 2CV engine swops and they were hard enough; 6-cylinder BMW looks pretty tough-going by comparison...

[bmwe30mtech]

An article on this would be an interesting and useful read.

Im thinking of converting my car to 325i this summer.

[snoops]

yeah definitly go for it im sure it would help a lot of people planning to do engine swaps

[cliffybabe]

dude id be interested to read the write up

[Turbo-Brown]

Cool, will get the pics off the camera and start typing tomorrow then

[seanboy]

Massey Ferguson 35 thats what I learnt to drive on. Oh Jesusss boy

[gooner1]

Mr Turbo brown, hope fully will be doing my m30 swap soon and any tips,help would be great.
This is what the zone should be all about. thanks mate look forward to seeing this post.

[gareth]

as the M30 is a tighter fit, i dropped my M20 out from below fully dressed with the subframe, pas pump and rack etc still on and fitted the M30 from underneath. no scraping of panels for me!

i used an engine crane for this though. also, the front needs to be scarily high up!



more pics on here for reference if it helps
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v382/ ... ?start=all

for removing an engine from a scrap-fodder donor, just cut the slam panel, crossmember etc off!!! (10 mins with just a hacksaw and so destructively fun and a LOAD quicker and easier!!!)

[Andy335Touring]

auto box wrongess

[Turbo-Brown]

There ya go, not the best write up, but it only took 25 mins!

This method worked for me as a safe and easy way to get the engine and gearbox out of an E30 without assistance from other people.

Undertaking this procedure presupposes that you've disconnected everything from the engine which attaches it to the bodywork including fuel, wiring, hydraulics and the prop (although I didn't disconnect this when I did it opting instead to drop the centre bearing).

Lifting a car to this height can be dangerous so be sure you know what you're doing before starting. I'd suggest that you walk the car up onto the axle stands by raising each side in turn by a couple of inches rather than just going for it.

The axle stands I used came from Screwfix and cost £19.99 when I bought them. They're rated to 6 tonnes each and have an extremely wide base and sturdy saddles. I'd recommend you buy something similarly robust before attempting this in the interests of safety. I've not mentioned the jack I used as I'm sure you can all come up with your own take on that

You'll note from some of the pictures that the saddles of the stands are damaging the cills of the car. I wasn't concerned about this as the shell's being scrapped but you'll probably want to arrange some protection for your shell.

SO! Without further ado, here we go.

You need to go to B&Q and buy some M10x1.5 studding. You can buy some M10 washers and M10 nuts too.

I cut mine into 500mm lengths:




Having got the car up on axle stands, it's time to take the front suspension off:







To support the back of the gearbox, I used a scissor jack and then undid the bolts securing the gearbox crossmember.




Once you're ready, take out one of the subframe bolts and replace it with a length of studding. Wind the nut up so that it takes the weight the bolt used to:




Work your way round the other bolts ONE BY ONE replacing them with the studding:






Now you're ready to start lowering the subframe, you can see it starting to leave the body in these pics. BE SURE THAT THE STUDDING IS NOT COMING UNSCREWED FROM THE CHASSIS AND KEEP THE WEIGHT ON EACH STUD AS EVEN AS POSSIBLE!






Once the subframe's on the ground (or sheet of ply wood as I opted to use) you'll notice the studding's taken on a bit of a curve:




All you need to do to get it to release from the subframe is jack the car up a little bit more. Mind out though as it'll BOING out of the subframe.




Finally, jack the car up some more so that the front of the car's about 700mm off the ground:






Then, pull like mad to get the engine out from under the car.


Refitting is the simple reversal of removal

[Two_Sheds]

Absolutely genius!

[liam012]

great bloody stuff
my front yard is gonna be like a scene out of planet of the apes now.....

[march109]

great bloody stuff
my front yard is gonna be like a scene out of planet of the apes now.....

eh? you gonna build a replica of the statue of liberty, bury her neck deep and ride round it on a horse with your shirt off?

[liam012]

wonder what the neighbours would think.

no i had that desolate mankind has left but left its machinery in tatters behind sort of a look sort of a thing going on -
was a warped analogy i shouldnt have wrote it!

sorry turbo brown to thread crap on such valuable infomation

[Turbo-Brown]

no worries, I liked that analogy.

[Theo]

That is a very smart idea indeed, I would like to try it, but will probably be lazy and stick with my old trusty crane.

Nice article though, should be in the write up section thingy.

[d6dph]

Great idea, Would it not help to make a basic tray out of 1x2 and ply with castors on, Then lower the engine onto that?

[Speedtouch]

Nice article dude - useful info. I like the way it saves on having to hire/buy and store an engine hoist or crane.

[Turbo-Brown]

Yeah, it probably "wood" arf arf.

Seriously though that's a good idea. I just used to sheet of ply as it's what we used when we put the engine into Brown. Thing I forgot is that there were three of us pushing and pulling the ply around that time whereas I did all the manuvering on me todd this time.

I'd forgotten just how heavy these engines are!

[d6dph]

Yeah, it probably "wood" arf arf.

Cue comedy "ba-doom tish" drum solo!

Sorry if that sounded like I was knocking your idea, I really wasn't. Nice to see a new idea that doesn't involve buying something you will use twice in your life!

[Turbo-Brown]

Not atall dude, there was a lot of huffing and puffing involved in the final stage that would've been taken away with the use of wheels. I ended up copying our primative ancestors in the end and used a couple of broom handles as rollers cos I was so knackered!

I'd probably start off a bit closer to the ground too (although the axle stands I've got are quite tall even in their shortest position) to make the job quicker.

Having two people armed with ratchet spanners would make it probably a 15 minute job too, even if the noise did get a bit irritating.

Gonna use this technique in reverse when I put the twin-turbo engine from Brown into Red soon so I'll take a couple of piccies of that. Think the main problems are gonna be getting the studding through the holes in the subframe, but it is reasonably flexible so it shouldn't be a problem I wouldn't think.

Should just be a case of winding it up into position after that I hope

[gooner1]

Pure Heath Robinson, brilliant.

[gareth]

I ended up copying our primative ancestors in the end and used a couple of broom handles as rollers cos I was so knackered!

remembering to take the heads off first of course!!!

that looks like a neat way of doing it and would certainly help with the hour i spent wrestling to get the bolts back in with the engine / subframe dangling!!!

incidentally, for getting the M30 in fully dressed, i think i needed about 800 - 850mm clearance of the front valence. that explains why the TPS hits the bonnet then!!!

these engines are bloody heavy though. the M20 wasn't too bad as it was being pulled out but the heavier M30 was an absolute swine to push underneath and it took 4 of us on a oily (lubricated by the smashed M20 sump!) bit of ply to get it underneath!

[stuartgallafant]

very well done brown!!

those lengths of studding look like they're under some stress!!

[Turbo-Brown]

Just to be on the safe side, lets say the studding's made of mild steel and that the root diameter of the thread's 7mm.

I'm ignoring the stress raising factor imposed by the thread form as I'm reckoning on the material actually being of a higher grade than mild steel.

The UTS of mild steel is around 310MN/m^2

We'll say the engine weighs 250kg drained and assume that it's mass is distributed evenly accross the crossmember. We'll ignore the mass of the gearbox saying it's supported by the jack we've put underneath it.

So, assuming that only one piece of studding each side is supporting the engine at a time we've got:

X-sec Area/stud:

(((7x10^-3)/2)^2)xPi=38.48x10^-6 m^2

The mass of the engine's distributed evenly accross the crossmember so we've got 125kg on each stud and gravity being what it is that gives us a load of:

125x9.81=1226.25N

So, the stress in each of the two studs is

S=F/A

1226.25/38.48x10^-6=31.86x10^6

or 31.86MN/m^2 which is roughly 1/10th of the load carrying capacity of our studs.

Must admit I'd not thought about calculating it before, but if anyone wondered, bits of studding are up to the task

I'm not sure how much the engine does weigh and I suspect it's less than 1/4 of a tonne so that builds in a factor of safety too.

[stuartgallafant]

dude, you're deep...

[Turbo-Brown]

It pays to check these things!

Also, forgot to add that we've got double the load capacity as we've got 4 studs in use rather than just the two, although load distribution between each side of the car's pair of studs is unlikely to be even due to the position of the engine mount which in itself can transmit only a limitied turning moment into the subframe to even things out over the stud pairs.

[stuartgallafant]

yep, indeed

[maxfield]

dude, you're deep...

Thats quite easy maths/physics

Guess you never did 3D trig at school

[Turbo-Brown]

What on Earth's 3D trig?!

[stuartgallafant]

Guess you never did 3D trig at school

i guess you did that at school today...

FYI, i wasnt talking about the calculations, i was merely suggesting that he went to great depths to prove to me that everything was safe, just because i said the steels looked stressed...

honestly, the youth of today...