Pull

Now that the old Miata is off the road for a while, it seemed like a good chance to pull the engine and do a little maintenance. It does have 100,000 miles on it, so it could use a little attention.

First we cleared the radiator and air filter out of the way so that we could see what we had.
I used to be able to pull the MG’s engine in a couple of hours, but this one took two solid days. Part of that is not being as familiar with it, and part of it was the amount of rust in places. But the thing that really made it slow was the sheer number of wires and hoses and connections. Many times the number the MG has. There were a number of tricky ones hiding under the intake manifold, including this annoying fellow.

I think that one is put there just as a cruel joke rather than serving any purpose.
As you can see from the oil, there appears to be a leak from around the crank angle sensor. That’s the sort of thing we’ll clean up while it’s out. You can also see some of the tags we left behind so we can figure this all out when we put it back together.
Finally we managed to get everything disconnected and eased the engine out.

That actually went pretty smoothly. Our new hoist has a load leveler which helps a lot in cramped quarters.