Further dismantling

Cooling system
Next was the cooling system. First I drained the radiator and expansion tank by loosening the lower radiator hose. That released most of the water in the system. The coolant was fairly clean, so that was a good sign (as opposed to the coolant in the 320/6).
Once done, I pulled the radiator and expansion tank. There is a bleeding screw in the block at the exhaust side under cylinder #5 which helps to drain the block itself. All hoses are easily disconnected (except perhaps those coming through the firewall from the heater, but after a bit of fiddling those were loose as well).
The mechanical fan can be hard to remove though. There is a huge nut that can be loosened with a screwdriver and a hard tap from a hammer. You can't just use a wrench on it because the fan clutch will slip and you'll have no grip.
Exhaust
Probably the most painful thing to remove on this car, partly due to the lack of a car lift. Since I was unable to unbolt the exhaust manifolds from the downpipes on the 320/6, I feared this would be the case here as well. Much to my surprise though, the nuts came loose with relatively little effort.
I had the car outside on jacks, and working under the car I disconnected the downpipes from the center muffler. Each pipe is attached with three bolts and nuts, and rusted as these were, I had to saw off one of the nuts. While the center muffler seemed in pretty good shape, the downpipes will need replacing.
Disconnecting the center muffler from the rear mufflers was the hardest thing I had done on the car so far. Even after having removed the rear roadwheels, accessibility is so bad that I'm surprised I managed to clear the job. Sure enough, two nuts had to be sawn off here due to rust. Eventually though, I had everything loose and could easily remove the rear mufflers. The center muffler is a bit harder to remove because it passes through the rear subframe, but after a bit of jamming it came loose as well.
I had never thought that the simple job of removing the exhaust would take me an entire day! It was 10:30pm when I was done, and having worked under the car all day had resulted in a sore back... And to think that I'll have to put everything back together later...
The Rear
After the irritating exhaust job, it was time for some more relaxing work. Now the trunklid, trailer hitch and rear lights were to be removed. The trailer hitch, being aftermarket, proved to be difficult to remove. It is fastened to the spare wheelwell with a handful of 17mm nuts and bolts, which were thouroughly rusted, and here again, I had to saw some of them off. Anyway, after a while the hitch was removed as well.
Previous Page - Next Page