Oil trap and block heater

2018-07-01:

It's always nice when you get to attach clean parts. Originally I intended to do without the block heater, but since I couldn't easily source a plug for its hole I decided to mount it back. It does seem to work also! I'm not so sure about the 30-year old gasket though... At least I did coat it with the mighty Hylomar M, which is the blue stuff you can see on many gaskets of this build... I can totally recommend the stuff, most often it seems to do magic for small oil or coolant leaks.

I couldn't find anything to screw into the big threaded hole in the bellhousing near the block coolant draining plug. Somebody told me that the hole is there for an RPM sensor for cars without "modern" injection system like the one this car has - Bosch LH2.2, which reads the engine RPM from a Hall sensor in the distributor.

The coolant draining plug by the way was filled with horrible gunk - I hope there are no other such nasty surprises in the cooling system...

It takes so much time to find parts in the garage shelves and then clean them... Luckily I have never been very enthusiastic about fully restoring parts, which would be even more time consuming! Somewhat worn but totally functional original stuff is good enough for me.

Oil sump and starter

2018-06-30: More cleaning and putting back the re-painted oil sump...

...and the starter I had cleaned some time ago.

It's almost three years since this one was in driving condition - here's an old picture of a clean car back then:

And now:

Older pictures can be seen in my Picasa album and newer ones in flickr.

2018-06-29: Some cleaning of the engine block and removal of surface rust, seal cover with new seals. I also cleaned the oil pump intake filter and put it back on its place. It wasn't that bad, but since the oil sump was off I thought it would make sense to clean it.

Winter beater

Originally I bought this 745 for spare parts, but somehow it turned to be my winter beater for 2017-2018.

745 is such a fun car to drive in the snow...

This one did require some extended maintenance though:

Although it did pass the Finnish equivalent of a MOT test, it still has some rust and other issues. We'll see if I ever get inspiration to repair it to pass another MOT.

Interesting observations, part 1

Just some things I found peculiar while taking apart the car...

Oil pressure sensor wire was "fixed" (Original broken wire is still there under the crankshaft pulley):

Someone had glued the coolant reservoir to its mounting bracket, how elegant:

The color of the transmission fluid is very healthy in my opinion:

Dismantling begins

As of today, I have disassembled the car quite a lot.

One of my goals is to take out the engine support bar and basically remove all the rust I can find. Then I'll install a lot prettier engine support bar that I had sandblasted and painted.

Issues

The car has some "issues"...

Saggy and stained headliner is not my first concern, although it will need some caring love at some point...

Also, the rust spots and bubbling paint on the surface are actually not on top of my todo-list. These are:

Well, at least I'll have no problems using my spare time for the winter months.