Engine rebuild with no former experience........

The time has come, I plan to rebuild my engine as I need to take it out of the car to paint the engine bay. It has a few issues, leaking rear main seal and head gaskets etc, so while it is out of the car I will take the opportunity to carry out a full rebuild. I have also had an issue with a loose valve guide so I will be able to fix this at the same time, on top of this I am sure I am down on power since I installed this engine ten years ago.

My garage space is very limited so I decided to put my XK8 into storage over the winter to free us space to work on the engine. I drove it to the storage location on Wednesday, it was a large grain store on a remote farm and was dry and extremely warm inside.



Yesterday I moved the car lift out of the way and retrieved the engine crane from the shed and had a freak accident!



I was using this pry bar to lever up one end of the car lift to fit its castor wheels to move it, I levered it up to put a block of wood under the frame and left bar down where I had used it.



Next the lift slipped off the block of wood, fell about 5cm and landed on the pry bar and propelled it through the air, into my head!

Ouch!



Back to it today, I jacked up the car and the supported under the chassis rails.





Then drained the fluids and removed the radiator.





Since there have been a few scare stories about car stands I decided to put another two stands under the sills without any weight on them as a backup, that will give me more confidence when working underneath.



To get some knowledge about engine building, I bought this US book, its not ideal for the MB engine but does cover all of the basics.



The weather is bad tomorrow so will make some more progress.

Jim, to overhaul an engine is pretty straight forward. Basically intake manifold, heads and block. Get the specs and tolerances and you are good. WIS should be in eye side.

Remember wisely-53 Thorsten overhauled a transmission. He is a pencil pusher at the fed. Government. WIS will help.
Btw, I wouldn’t touch a damn automatic transmission with a 10 foot pole
Rudiger

Hi Jim,

I love your “ I can do it attitude “ a complete Engine rebuild without having it done before, chapeau.
I hope you have also mechanical capacity somewhere available to machine or grind the joint faces Motor block cylinder head if necessary or to hone the cylinders if you have to replace the pistons with oversized ones.
A recommendation I got from a friend of mine, a mechanic, is when you start to disassemble the intake manifold mark every screw you take out with a sequential number and mark the same number on the hole in the manifold with a permanent marker. That is extremely helpful based on the different length of the screws when you have to reassemble. And take photos, photos and more photos. But whom am I telling this with your experience.
I guess you have a motor stand like this one to carry the motor block for the rebuild work. www.harborfreight.com/2000-lbs-capacity-...ine-stand-69522.html
I wish you all the best for your project and may the accident you have had will be the only one.
Please keep us posted with your progress.

Hi Jim,
if the guy on the book is the one from "home improvement/hör mal wer da hämmert) you should know that not everything they did was working .
Just a joke >> I'm sure you will fix it !
Gruss
Achim

Hi Jim,

good luck with the job and hopefully no more freak accidents.
The one you had now is kind of typical: a few incidents that subsequentially occur and that you alltogether never had on your radar.
Please keep us updated, I think most of the people here like your stories and appreciate them.

Regards, Lutz

I purchased this engine stand.

www.sgs-engineering.com/es2000-680kg-fol...EktsgvgaAgZxEALw_wcB

Rather than this one.

www.amazon.co.uk/Sealey-ES900F-Folding-E...pacity/dp/B000RO3TTS

After watching this video.