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Engine teardown

Start with an engine on an engine stand.

The intake manifold has already been removed, so no pics on that removal. Also, I neglected to take a before photo.


Turn motor upside down on the engine stand. Using a 14mm socket remove the 6 exhaust manifold nuts and pull manifold off. This one looks weird because it is a twin turbo exhaust manifold. Using the 14mm socket, remove the 4 bolts holding the motor mounts.




Next to remove is the oilpan. Use a 10mm socket. Then whack repeatedly with a rubber mallet. The dipstick needs to be removed first. On the top of the block is a 10mm bolt holding the dipstick tube. Remove bolt and yank dipstick tube out of oil pan.


Next remove the eight 10mm bolts that hold the oil pick up tube and splash guard. Don’t drop them into the engine!





To remove the oil cooler, you need a deep socket 24mm. Remove oil filter. Haha. The socket fits over the threaded section that the oil filter screws onto. This bolt/tube is about 3-4” long. Undo the two hose clamps on the hose FARTHEST away from the cooler and remove the cooler and two hoses as a unit.

Now on both heads you need a 10mm socket to remove the bolts that hold the back of the timing belt covers on. Remove rear covers.





Next to remove is the timing belt tensioner, tensioner mounting bracket and the water pump. The tensioner pictured is held on with two 12mm bolts. The bracket directly behind it is held in place with three 12 mm bolts. The water pump is held in place with six 10 mm bolts. When you remove the water pump, you can easily leave the hoses and metal hoses attached. Simply unbolt the 10mm mounting bolts and the water pump and hoses should come off as a for you to deal with later.



Next is head removal. Remove the various (depends upon the head model) 10mm bolts that hold the cam cover on.


Next you need to remove the cam caps. They are held on with 12mm bolts. They are labeled so you don’t need to worry about mixing them up. Just look at them to understand/remember where they will be returned to.






To remove the cams, tap GENTLY on the front of the cam UPWARDS and they will pop out. Now you need to remove the 6 head bolts. Using a 14mm twelve point socket and a ½” breaker bar, remove these 6 long bolts. PLEASE NOTE I am NOT removing the bucket and shims at this point. The buck and shims are the eight shiny ½ dollar sized parts. Note that some heads are bucket only, some are rocker arm, and some bucket and shim. The shim is a thin piece of metal that sits on top of the bucket. Of any head that has shims, DO NOT mess up the order in which they are placed!!!!!!


Once the bolts are removed, the head will simply lift off. Repeat for the other head. Set heads aside in a safe clean area. If you are going to be reusing the head without a valve job, then you don’t need to do anything with the buckets and shims. If you are going to have a valve job done, YOU NEED TO pull out the bucket and shim and keep them in the EXACT same order they started as. You screw it up, its your motor…. Reinstalling and calibration of heads is not to be discussed in this thread.

Now rotate the engine back to UP. We will next remove the crossover pipe and oil pump.



There are four 10mm bolts holding the crossover pipe on. BE GENTLE!!!! These four bolts like to snap. The crossover pipe then lifts off.





Last item to remove is the oil pump. Whoops, didn’t do a before photo…. Anyway, the oil pump is held in place by six 10mm bolts. Remove those and gently tap the bottom of the oil pump AWAY from the block to break the seal. There are two dowels that locate the oil pump to the block. Gently wiggle and pull the oil pump and it will come off. Remove the little black gasket near the bottom on the block.





OK, that’s it for now. I will continue when I crack open the block and remove the bearings……..

Wow. You're god-like.

hahaha.

asc_up wrote:Wow. You're god-like.

hahaha.

i second that statement.

Awesome.

And the only reason you had to remove the cams was to gain access to the head bolts, correct?

To remove DOHC heads, you must remove the cams.

For SOHC heads, the cams are "centered" and so the head bolts are freely accessible. This is for ej22 and phase 2 SOHC 2.5 heads.

This isn't your first time, is it?

beatersubi wrote:This isn't your first time, is it?

are you kidding? (no sarcasm, i'm just asking)

Good pictorial. That twin turbo exhaust setup is odd. Looks like a crosspipe connects the two headers, but only exists for pulse tuning purposes. I wonder what effect it achieves vs. two completely separate headers.

Thanks Doug, this is really good info.

IronMonkeyL255 wrote:Awesome.

And the only reason you had to remove the cams was to gain access to the head bolts, correct?

For SOHC you don't even need to remove the valve covers to get to the head bolts.

+1 Excellent info!!!

Please post the next time you crack a short-block open/in half!

AWD_addict wrote:For SOHC you don't even need to remove the valve covers to get to the head bolts.

The only heads I have had a chance to remove have been SOHC.

Hopefully soon I will have the $$ for a DOHC swap of my own......

Next we remove the flywheel. These eight bolds are 14mm fine thread. Don’t lose em. I prefer to use an impact wrench to remove them, but if you need to use a breaker bar, keep the wrench wedged in to hold the flywheel in place.





Once the flywheel is removed, we have to pull the four pistons from out of the block. On the rear of the block are two cover plates held in place with Philip head screws. These guys WILL strip using a hand screwdriver unless you get lucky. Preferable use an impact driver to loosen them, or get a GOOD tipped Philips head and smack that as your attempt to loosen.




Pry off the covers to reveal the insides.



Here you will see the 14mm hex plug that hides the access point to the wristpin. The other side does not have a plug.



Using a 14mm hexbit, remove the plug.



On the front of the engine you find two hex plugs. Remove both plugs









Now rotate the crank so you can see the cir-clip holding the wristpin in. Either the front two will be visible, or the rear two. Using needle nose pliers, pull these clips out. You can reuse them, its up to you. Obviously if you damage one (I don’t know how the hell you would), you should replace it. But since there is NO stress on them, I reuse them.

Now comes the fun part where you need to fabricate some sort of wrist pin removal tool. Subaru uses two types of wrist pin. The EJ22 and EJ25 are “easy” to remove and use the lower tool. These pins have a simple hole through them that allows the tool to slip through and hook the edge. The EJ20 wrist pin SUCKS. The hole is tapered and so requires a lot of patience and often some help. The tool to use is on top.




You can see the difference in this photo.



Using the top tool in conjunction with a section of 12guage wire, you fish both through and then pull back on the tool to jamb the nub in the small section of the wrist pin so you can yank out the pin. Plain and simple, this can take awhile if the pins are really stubborn.



Once the wrist pins are removed, you can rotate the crank to remove the pistons. First rotate the crank around and this will push the piston to the front and leave them there. Now push the piston back into the cylinder while twisting it.



Then rotate the crank again and this will cause the rod to hit the back of the piston and push it out.



Keep track of which piston came out of which hole and label them.

Next step is to separate the two block halves.

Using a 12mm 12point socket, remove the 5 upper bolts.





Remove the 3 front bolts



Remove the two bolts inside the water jacket.



Spin the block around and remove the 6 bolts on the other side inside the water jacket.



On the back where the flywheel was is a single 12mm bolt. You need small breaker bar to remove this bolt. DO NOT use a wrench, it will round over.



The last bolt to remove is inside and requires a 10mm socket. You need a small breaker bar to remove this bolt. DO NOT use a wrench, it will round over.



OK, that’s all the bolts.

To separate the block, you WILL have to tap it apart. Sometime you will have to REALLY tap it apart, hard enough to deform the aluminum. There are two places that have a small tube that fits into the other side of the block and these get sticky. I tap the block apart in the back, left to right on the tranny housing area.




Then I tap apart in the front.



This is where it will stick together.




Finally, you can lift the block halve off the other.



DONE!

Next I will reinstall bearings. But that will be awhile, I am going to have the block hot tanked to get it nice and clean.

You just hit it with the sledge, you don't use a block of wood between?

Yup. But I start tapping VERY lightly.

I have had to whale the shit out of a block before to get it separated. Then I had to file down the aluminum flat again where I beat on it. Normally though the tapping works great.

A block of wood obviously would help keep damage down, but it also absorbs energy.

Looking forward to the next step!

I've used 3/4" scrap oak that worked fine, but you've done this MANY more times than I ever will. You'd need a lot of scrap to do it often as it tends to break apart, especially if you don't hit it square.

evolutionmovement wrote:I've used 3/4" scrap oak that worked fine, but you've done this MANY more times than I ever will. You'd need a lot of scrap to do it often as it tends to break apart, especially if you don't hit it square.

Maybe a piece of hard, but not brittle, plastic?

I've used a rubber mallet to separate a couple blocks, it doesn't damage anything but itself.

You might want to add a detail about keeping piston pins with their respective pistons.

I have a good "before" photo of the oil pump if you want to use it.

Doug, this is an awesome resource. Thank you.

Maybe this should be stickied....