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After reading tales of woe and seeing photos of big ends that have been replaced, I decided it was a a wise move to sort my big ends out sooner rather than later.
I started Saturday morning, as has been said by many the hardest part of the job is persuading the sump pan to part company from the engine block. I had noted a tip originally shared by Julian which was, get an old knife and hammer it into the edge of the small gap between the pan and the block.
Once this was achieved, it was a case of hammering it along the mating surface to break the bond between the two surfaces. The sump pan is double skinned so don't worry about being rough with it.... I ended up bending the front of mine while removing it but it soon bent back to shape once off.
Once the pan was off it was time to set about replacing the big end bearings (BEBS).
I used a 1 1/4 (32mm) socket to rotate the crank using the front pulley bolt.
Cylinders 1 & 6 were first with nothing untoward to report.
Next to come to BDC were cylinders 3 & 4, again no problems with the original shells.
Then came cylinders 2 & 5, No2 was looking fine but..... No5 was a little worse for ware, there was a huge crater in the top (rod shell) bearing that was well on its way to causing a major engine failure.
L to R shells 1 to 5 top shells at the top of photo
Close up of shell 5 upper
One tip gleaned from an other 80 owner, after tightening the new stretch bolts to 37NM, place a 'dot' of tipp-ex on each bolt nearest the center of the cap. This will assist in the next process of tightening to a further 90 degrees, the finished job should result in all 'dots' facing the front or rear of the motor.
All the shells that came out were No4's and were replaced with ACL bearings.
The new shells were coated with Graphogen before assembly, I have seen engines assembled with this stuff and ran for 10 minutes BEFORE the engine oil was added.... needless to say I didn't try this on my truck
I started Saturday morning, as has been said by many the hardest part of the job is persuading the sump pan to part company from the engine block. I had noted a tip originally shared by Julian which was, get an old knife and hammer it into the edge of the small gap between the pan and the block.
Once this was achieved, it was a case of hammering it along the mating surface to break the bond between the two surfaces. The sump pan is double skinned so don't worry about being rough with it.... I ended up bending the front of mine while removing it but it soon bent back to shape once off.
Once the pan was off it was time to set about replacing the big end bearings (BEBS).
I used a 1 1/4 (32mm) socket to rotate the crank using the front pulley bolt.
Cylinders 1 & 6 were first with nothing untoward to report.
Next to come to BDC were cylinders 3 & 4, again no problems with the original shells.
Then came cylinders 2 & 5, No2 was looking fine but..... No5 was a little worse for ware, there was a huge crater in the top (rod shell) bearing that was well on its way to causing a major engine failure.
L to R shells 1 to 5 top shells at the top of photo
Close up of shell 5 upper
One tip gleaned from an other 80 owner, after tightening the new stretch bolts to 37NM, place a 'dot' of tipp-ex on each bolt nearest the center of the cap. This will assist in the next process of tightening to a further 90 degrees, the finished job should result in all 'dots' facing the front or rear of the motor.
All the shells that came out were No4's and were replaced with ACL bearings.
The new shells were coated with Graphogen before assembly, I have seen engines assembled with this stuff and ran for 10 minutes BEFORE the engine oil was added.... needless to say I didn't try this on my truck
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they spend all of their life in oil.