Managed to bust out part of the casting on the cam tower. Not sure whether to replace or repair.

[DeltaWye]

Got the cam tower on, the rockers kept falling off no matter how much assembly lube I used, and the garage wasn't even that warm but it was still thin enough to flow out.  Wound up using a bit of axle grease which did the trick, afterwards I saw the factory manual says to use grease 

 

I tested the torque wrench this time, tightened everything up to 14 ft lbs.  Going out now so I'll do the cover later tonight and get everything put back tomorrow.  Should I use some sealant along the bottom edge of the valve cover or just rely on the rubber gasket?

[TomRhere]

The gasket should seal it itself, no need for any sealant there.

[DaveT]

I've always used grease.  Be sure to closely read the timing belt procedure.   Have not added sealant to the fancy cover gaskets.  They are like fancy o rings, shouldn't need any, if they are not old / hard.

[DeltaWye]

I've always used grease.  Be sure to closely read the timing belt procedure.   Have not added sealant to the fancy cover gaskets.  They are like fancy o rings, shouldn't need any, if they are not old / hard.

 

Awesome, thanks guys.  Yep, the gasket is a brand spanking new Fel-Pro, that's what I was working on in the first place when disaster struck. 

 

Oh, and I bought an air ratchet, was 50% off at Canadian Tire so only $40. 

Edited November 18, 2016 by DeltaWye

[DaveT]

that should work for turning the oil pump.

[DeltaWye]

Finally fired the car up at 8 pm today.  Was louder than usual at first, definitely ticking on the passenger side but it settled down after a few minutes.  It came back and then went away again.  Ran into some issues while putting things back together which I'll explain in more detail.

 

I'll give a bit of a write-up in case anyone finds this helpful in the future.

 

Here's what it looked like once I had everything but the old cam tower out. 

 

 

I wound up removing the charcoal canister and bracket and all of the air intake parts before I swapped cam towers - easy to do and only took a few minutes.  Plus, I was able to paint the old rusted bracket.

 

Here's the new cam tower cleaned up and ready for sealant.

 

 

Here's a view of the cylinder head with the old tower removed and the lifters having dropped onto the rag that the book said to put there.  I realize that this is a disadvantage of horizontally opposed engines.

 

 

Here's the O-ring ready to go in it's spot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 20, 2016 by DeltaWye

[DeltaWye]

The oil pump - the difficulty here was getting the pulley off which you need to remove to change the shaft seal.  The Haynes book says to hold the pulley with channel locks with a rag over it.  It needed two people and a lot of effort to get it free.  However, two of the three spot welds on the one side were broken, not sure if it happened while I was trying to get it apart or it was already like that.  Here's my amateurish welding repair:

 

 

If you have to do this, you need to grind the welds right down because it doesn't have much clearance when it's installed again.  Here it is with the new seal installed.  I used a socket and a rubber mallet to work it in.

 

[DeltaWye]

Here's the new cam tower installed

 

 

I noticed a bunch of white foamy stuff on this part of the cylinder head, I forgot to take a picture before I wiped it off.  I think it's from a coolant leak which I may have found the source of

 

 

I put the valve cover on next.  If you're doing this job, throw away the torque wrench for this part.  I think the rubber affects the reading too much.  I just tightened them up to a reasonable torque and figured if it leaked, I could snug it up a little or remove it and add sealant. 

 

 

I decided to put the inner timing belt cover on even though I planned to leave the outer covers off.  It had a couple of problems.  First, it had warped a bit and the camshaft sprocket had chewed a groove in it.  I fixed that with a heat gun until the middle was bowed slightly in the other direction, which would flatten out once it was bolted to the engine.  The other problem is that the rubber edging must have swelled, because it was about 3/4" too wide:

 

 

So out came the snips.  The whole mess was gummy enough that I didn't have to worry about them falling off.

 

 

I also decided to epoxy the one insert that had broken out at some point.  I'll probably never put the outer covers back on so it was kind of a waste of time but I wanted to fix it while I had the chance (though since it was on the bottom outer corner, I could have fixed it after it was installed, oh well).

 

Edited November 20, 2016 by DeltaWye

[DeltaWye]

Another issue I had was with the oil filler neck.  At the bottom where it bolts to the cam tower is a black plastic gasket and screen.

 

Part of the screen was broken off but there was still 5 or 6 pieces of tin foil from oil bottles over the years.  I made a new gasket out of cork for now

 

 

 

I may order the part if it's cheap and available.  Clever to put a screen there though it probably should have been made of metal.  Do most engines have this?

 

I also marked the front edge of the timing belts and a few teeth on the camshaft and crankshaft sprockets with a paint marker.  It made it easy to make sure they didn't get flipped around and that they didn't jump a tooth while I was putting them back on (which happened a couple of times until I got the technique down).

 

 

I didn't have the factory tool for putting tension on the belt, so I improvised with two 5/16" drill bits and a scrap piece of wood.

 

 

 

[DeltaWye]

I also took the time to paint everything that I took off that was rusty.  Some of the parts are so rotted that even with new paint they still look bad, but hopefully it will slow the rust down a bit.

 

 

 

Also painted the radiator frame, battery hold down, charcoal canister holder and the water pump and crank pulleys.  They obviously wind up with water and/or salt sitting in them and the crank pulley was really bad:

 

 

Didn't get an after picture but just wire-wheeled it, sprayed some rust converter, masked off the bearing surfaces and sloshed some oil-based paint on it.

 

Also put on a new belt for the A/C, although the system has a leak somewhere and I haven't had time to chase it yet.

 

 

The two big problems I had were with the engine mounts and a coolant leak.  When I lowered the engine down, the studs were not lined up with the holes in the crossmember.  The engine was too far forwards.  I wound up tilting the jack towards the back of the car and using a pry bar between the exhaust pipe flange and engine mount studs.  I got the driver side one to line up first and just lowered the jack a tiny bit at a time and worked the other one with the pry bar until it lined up to.  Wasted a fair bit of time until I came up with a plan.

The other problem was that I stupidly connected the radiator hoses to the engine before I had lowered it.  Wrestling with connecting the lower hose to the pipe with the 90 degree bend that connects to the water pump caused the pipe to leak where it goes into the pump.  I wasted two hours fighting to remove the A/C compressor to get at the pipe mount to take it apart.  The O-ring seemed okay and I realized that nothing was worn or broken, it was just the fact that I had put too much stress on it connecting the hose and the mount doesn't really hold the pipe very solidly.  I would disconnect the lower hose at the radiator next time.  I also broke a ring terminal off a wire and had to fix that too.  I guess it's to be expected that when you do major work on a 22-year-old rust belt car, you're going to have a whole bunch more things to fix along the way.

 

Almost forgot, I cobbled together a little tool out of some scraps to keep the flywheel from turning while I loosened and tightened the crank bolt.  Can you tell I'm not a welder?  Probably overkill, but I didn't want to risk breaking something off and having it fall inside the bell housing.

 

 

Anyway, thanks to everyone who helped and I hope some of this info will be helpful to someone. 

Edited November 20, 2016 by DeltaWye

[DeltaWye]

Just reading some of my earlier posts, I did use the air ratchet to run the pump before I put the timing belts on.  Hopefully it got some oil into the new camshaft before start-up.  I ended up putting everything back together before I started the engine - I figured it was either going to work or it wasn't.  I didn't use any sealant on the valve cover gasket and there's no sign of any leaks either there or on the sealant-only joint between the cam tower and cylinder head.  I used this stuff:

 

https://www.amazon.ca/Permatex-51813-Anaerobic-Gasket-Maker/dp/B0002UEONM

 

You don't get much for the money but someone here recommended 'anaerobic' gasket maker for this job.  It was very hard to squeeze out until I cut the nozzle back further.  I probably put it on a little too thick but I put it more towards the outside edge so it would squeeze out there.  I put a thin bead between the O-ring and the main cavity, also recommended by someone here.

Edited November 20, 2016 by DeltaWye

[Dee2]

great summary and congrats on a job well done  

[TomRhere]

Glad to read that you got it up and running again.

[DaveT]

Even when you prime the oil, you still get lots of ticking off and on. It takes a while for the air to get out of the lifters.