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Rodeo 6vd1 dohc engine swap

5K views 16 replies 3 participants last post by  chimpboy 
#1 ·
I am in the process of replacing the engine in my 2000 Holden Frontera (Isuzu Rodeo).

I am pretty much down to three exhaust flange bolts (one side done, the other soaking in penetrating oil as they wouldn't budge), the bellhousing bolts, and the six torque convertor<->flex plate bolts.

Fingers crossed this all goes well; I am about a solid 10 hours in I think now and I am starting to worry it is going to take more time than I can afford.

I'll put some photos up later; I have been taking them as I go. Of course some things are actually easier to photograph on the disassembled parts than while they are still in the vehicle!

Just to confirm something for now though - I've read a few threads including viewtopic.php?f=4&t=19649, and have had a look in my PDF manual, so I picked up the fact that I have to take out six bolts that hold the torque convertor to the engine inside the bellhousing. I see that I could have done a bit of damage otherwise - I have not had much to do with automatic transmissions before.

Is there anything else "invisible" that I should be aware of? It's a 6VD1 DOHC mated to a 4l30E I believe. I've pretty much unhooked every hose and wire, so I think I am pretty close to putting the crane on and simply lifting the engine out.
 
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#2 ·
For those interested and also for my own tracking for reinstallation, a bit of a run-through of what I have done so far in the removal.

- removed air filter box, afm and all as a single assembly - basically everything from the inner guard to the throttle body in a few pieces
- removed radiator with its hoses and shroud
- removed fan at the same time
- removed serpentine belt
- drained power steering reservoir, disconnected power steering hoses, pushed off to one side. (power steering pump still on engine, probably could have removed that and left hoses on it but oh well)
- disconnects a/c hoses and put to side (gas was already out due to previous owner - long story)
- removed throttle cable and cruise cable, put to one side
- disconnected pipe from bottom of EGR (it goes to the exhaust manifold)
- lifted off injectors/fuel rail/"common chamber" (intake plenum) all in one piece
- disconnected fuel lines at back of common chamber once I had moved it forward a bit for better access to those awful hose clamps
- removed engine mount bolts on both sides (from above, to obtain donor engine I noted it was easy to go in from the side if the wheels and soft guards are off)
- removed exhaust flange nuts at manifolds (will I have to undo the other end of these exhaust sections as well?) on one side - should be three nuts but I got three nuts and one stud with a nut still on it :), still to do side B. TOUGH nuts to crack.
- removed "dust cover" at front of transmission (underneath)
- disconnected a lot of plugs in the wiring loom, fairly logical so far in that a lot of loom will come with the engine and a lot won't

Still to do:

- torque convertor-flex plate bolts x 6
- bellhousing bolts
- second side of exhaust
- probably release some wiring from the side of the motor - I think some of it runs along the motor but should not come with it (?)
- anything else?

Then I will turn my new motor into a copy of my old motor as far as accessories, wiring, etc go. And I will clean up whatever is easier to get to with the motor out as well. And then I'll try to work out how all the vacuum hoses go back together. Geez there are a lot of vacuum hoses. I hope I took enough photos of them.

Any suggestions or tips no matter how obvious are welcome, I would rather be told something obvious than miss something obvious!!!

(Note to self - put a jack under the transmission at the engine end!)
 
#3 ·
I had to make a custom tool to get the flex plate <-> torque converter bolts off.







It is a cut down 17mm socket (six walls not 12 points), that can be controlled with a 19mm spanner and that fits through the space allowed by the inspection cover.

With this tool I needed an assistant to turn the crank (24mm socket, long bar). I could not crack the bolts from underneath but I could hold my spanner and custom socket still enough so that my friend could crack them by turning the crank. It was actually pretty easy - once loosened a little they were easy to undo with two fingers.

I read that you can also get to them through the opening left when you remove the starter motor. I can't say whether this is true or not but I don't think it would be easy in any case.

The manual says not to reuse these bolts. Why is that? My inclination was to put a drop of loctite on them and reuse them.
 
#4 ·
... aaaaaaand she's out. I won't say it was fun but having the old engine out feels good.

Now I can do the relatively clean job of transferring parts to the new motor and then I'll be putting it all back together, and of course it will start first turn of the key. Right..?



 
#5 ·
chimpboy said:
The manual says not to reuse these bolts. Why is that? My inclination was to put a drop of loctite on them and reuse them.
The FSM recommends replacing the bolts, I reasonably sure most mechanics do not because they cost about 8 bucks each.
Bolt; Plate to Converter Honda/Isuzu part # 8-94157-666-2 M10 x 14.7mm
Torque: 54 N•m (40 lb ft) (V6)
 
#7 ·
Also a chance they could be torque-to-yield bolts (and therefore are no longer capable of bearing design loads as they've been removed).
 
#8 ·
Well, I hope they don't all shear one day...

Put the new motor in today. It was hot in the garage but I got to have a dip in the neighbour's pool when I was done.

It's got four bellhousing bolts in and three engine mount bolts, the rest still to be done. I could have pressed on but I was pretty tired from heaving it together.

I got to try the wet toilet paper to press out a bush trick. Never tried it before. It worked. I don't know how else I would have gotten the pilot bush from the old motor out. I hear you can do it with grease too but I think it was better to have water squirting out at me from time to time than grease.

The transmission was relatively easy to line up as far as that bush goes, and then it took a fair while to get the dowels lined up. My five-year-old son came to check on me at just the right moment for me to say "put your hands here and your feet here and don't let this engine crane move", and while he did that I got one bellhousing bolt started and that was enough to get the rest lined up, with a bit of jiggling.

So now it is just putting bolts back in and plugging stuff back together.

I took some photos of the inside of the old air plenum vs the new one, have to post them later. The old one is absolutely filthy inside. It really makes me wonder about retaining the EGR valve as this is clearly, if not the sole cause, a significant factor and I think particulate matter has been delivered via the EGR valve. I wonder what might improve this. If it is correct that you can't just blank it off without getting a check engine light, then I wonder about introducing some kind of filtration.
 
#9 ·
Yes but remember I was just offering a guess; I have no strong evidence to back it up. TTY bolts are usually found where there's high frequency cyclic loading (where they resist fatigue much better than normal bolts) such as cylinder heads. Dunno either way how much of that kind of loading your torque converter bolts see.

Looking forward to seeing the plenum photos. That's one of the common issues with these engines from what I understand; once everything's gummed up enough you won't do much by squirting cleaner down the EGR tube; you help yourself best by doing that periodically so it never gets gummed in the first place. Speaking of the EGR, I'd advise against disabling the system; it helps keep combustion temp from getting too high and helps avoids knock.
 
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#10 ·
Old common chamber (bottom half... forgot to take pics of the top half but it was about the same), vs new.



The pipe that delivers the exhaust gas to near the throttle body was almost completely blocked too.





Remember when I say "new" engine, I am talking about one that I salvaged from a crashed ute/pickup. Not sure what those are called stateside. It was obviously rebuilt but also obviously was a running vehicle. It had a blanked EGR port on the lower part of the common chamber but I am not sure that was a modification; it may be that it wasn't part of that model's engine management. There was no port in the exhaust manifold and the upper half of the common chamber had no butterfly valves nor any allowance for them. I believe this muck is all from the EGR system. I have an idea to improve it without eliminating it but I will probably not bother, at least not for now.

Since the two top halves of the common chamber are not the same, I have to reuse the old one. I painted the one I am reusing with VHT wrinkle black. I think it looks pretty good. I cleaned it up inside but of course there are parts that can't be reached.



I also did the cam covers. I have not used this paint before but I really like it.

New engine in place - partially bolted to transmission and engine mounts but everything else still to be hooked up.



Ooooooh look what the postman brought. Better get this thing running:

 
#11 ·
DONE!!!

Whew, that was a fairly big job.

I fired the new engine up this afternoon. First attempt: nothing doing. Then I remembered that I needed the alternator bracket on because it is the main ground connection for the block (and hence the starter motor). Second attempt - vrooooom vroom. Started right away. All seems good. There was a touch of blue smoke which made me worried; then I remembered I'd put a little oil into the cylinders for a wet compression test. It stopped pretty quickly.

Now to get the a/c gassed up and then do nothing to the car for a few weeks - fingers crossed it just does what it's supposed to do now!
 
#12 ·
Also, a correction - I said I thought it would be hard to get to the torque converter/flex plate bolts through the starter motor opening. Actually, it is quite easy to get to them once the starter motor is off, all the more so if you have the exhaust manifold off on that side too.

I still like my special tool for this job though ;)
 
#13 ·
Good to see everything came together. And very satisfying that the starting trouble was easily remedied, and not something that required tearing everything apart again. Congrats!
 
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#14 ·
5009TWI said:
Good to see everything came together. And very satisfying that the starting trouble was easily remedied, and not something that required tearing everything apart again. Congrats!
Thanks! I drove it for about an hour today. I'd only intended to go out for a ten minute test run but it was all good so I kept on cruising. Haven't thrashed it hard or anything yet but there are no worrying sounds or anything yet.

Nothing too exciting about this video but it was a nice moment for me:

[BBvideo 560,340:17ox8lu7]http://vimeo.com/198772775[/BBvideo]

I only ran it very briefly as there was no coolant etc yet.

There was one amusing setback for me. Don't do this:



One of the studs on the manifold wound up bang in the middle of the exhaust pipe after I bolted everything together. It took a lot longer than you would hope to rectify that and free up the pipe.
 
#15 ·
100km/60 miles on the "new" engine now.

Rock solid temperature gauge, no warning lights, no clunks, bangs or other noises, and no drips of anything on the ground.

Feels good, but I will need a bit more time before I trust it.
 
#16 ·
Excellent time to do a compression test and log the results. If nothing else, establish a baseline you can refer back to in the future
 
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#17 ·
5009TWI said:
Excellent time to do a compression test and log the results. If nothing else, establish a baseline you can refer back to in the future
I agree in principle - I did one while the new engine was still hanging on the engine crane though, as it was a bit of an unknown quantity. It tested well and looked good so I went ahead and put it in.

Just got the a/c gassed up and it is working well, blowing out at 8 degrees C which is acceptable.
 
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