Old Tracker Last Rites And Beginning Work On New Tracker, Starting With Old Engine Removal3/29/2020 After removing the engine and everything that was still usable on the old Tracker I was able to quickly get the F250 hooked up to the car trailer and stage it by the body so I could get it hooked up with a come along in order to winch it onto the trailer. Because of the slight downgrade that the trailer was on, once the first set of wheels made it up the ramps, every winch was pretty effortless as gravity did some work to bring the Tracker body onto the trailer the rest of the way. With the body all the way on the trailer I was able to hook up the ratchet straps onto the front set of wheels to hold the body in place but needed to still swap one more tire out. The rims that I wanted had old tires and the new Tracker's heavy plain rims had good tires on them. I had to have them swapped around so the good rims had the good tires and vice versa. I still had one more tire left when I put the body on the trailer. The next day I was able to swap that tire out. Mind you the first tire I put on the old Tracker body still had a good tire on it. My original plan was to stop by the tire shop on the way to the junkyard to have the tires swapped out while the body is on the trailer then go ahead and drop the body off with a set of old rims and tires. Crazy thing is the fact that the Tracker body sans powertrain and many other parts is super super light, much lighter than other vehicles. In transit to the junkyard we travelled over some uneven overall rippled road that had the truck and trailer bouncing around a little. When this happened the damn Tracker body had actually shifted enough that one of the front wheels (which were facing the back of the trailer) was hanging over the inner edge of the trailer platform. The thing was about ready to slide off on the inside edge of the ramp at this rate. Because of this we were unable to remove the last tire that we wanted to swap around. So off to the junkyard we went, figuring we'd remove the tire after getting the body off the trailer. The situation at the junkyard was a bunch of horseshit. First of all these cocksuckers wouldn't even help us remove the body despite the situation at hand, their excuse, liability reasons. When we dropped off the Grand Prix at a different junkyard they came with the magnet and picked the body up right off the trailer, no questions asked. They had a sign at the gate saying they're not responsible for shit if they unload your shit for you, simple, reasonable. These assholes wanted to be difficult. Anyway, I did figure out a plan to unload the body w/o it falling off the inside edge of the trailer platform. I would place one of the ramps on the inner frame between the platforms, to serve as an extension in case the wheel did slide all the way off. OK, as I was finalizing that plan, a yard forklift came behind my rig, waiting to go inside. The bitch at the counter comes out talking about moving my truck to let him in, nevermind this means having to back the damn rig back onto the scale since I would have to be facing in towards the yard to go in and drop the body off. So I got pissed off as they couldn't even try to finish things up with us so we don't have to deal with that extra hassle and let the motherfucker on the forklift wait a minute. At the same time as I was getting back into the truck to move it, still being pissed at the level of incompetence that the yard is showing with these troglodytes they have under their employ, the ole lady comes out with the title in hand saying "let's get outta here and go to the other junkyard, these guys are bullshittin". Asking why, just out of curiosity and not because I was mad, she said these assholes were trying to deduct all these different costs due to the missing parts (engine, tranny, interior parts, BATTERY?, seats, etc.) By the time it was all said and done we would've gotten probably $50 for the body. So yeah good call, fuck Pull A Part, for future reference, if you ever plan on scrapping a car that you may have stripped a few parts from, don't bother with these assholes, they're trying to bend you over from the starting line. So off to the Can Man (ironic name for a junkyard eh?) to scrap the body. After getting there, again, there was no hassle, they weigh you in, you pull over to a staging spot so they can have you out of the way while they bring in a forklift of magnet crane (in this case a forklift), they hoist the body off the trailer and you weigh back out and go turn in the title and the ticket and collect your money. The whole process took no time, they gave me a minute to undo the straps and after lifting the body off the trailer gave me a minute to pull the tire off I wanted and off they went with the body. Now ironically I ended up getting $71, more than what PAP was gonna give us for body. Score another for The Can Man. With the old Tracker out of the picture attention turned to the new Tracker. This involved pulling the truck onto the main driveway and then giving it a little push down the sloped driveway where I was able to steer into the side park and further in where I can stage the truck for the old engine removal. This went rather easy, all things considered. With the Tracker staged in a spot where I had room to move the body back further when the engine is pulled free. I broke down the engine crane and moved it in front of the Tracker to have it ready to hook up. Now the real work begins. Just like with the old Tracker I had to remove a bunch of shit, radiator, fan, air intake hose, etc. I had to unplug a bunch of plugs and hoses as well. At least I did take time to tab the plugs so as to make it a little easier to identify where respective plugs go so I'm not hunting around test fitting plugs for their proper homes and possibly running the risk that there are duplicate plugs in the mix. It really didn't take long to get things removed and unplugged and get the crane set up over the engine to hoist it out. The hardest part was getting the engine separated from the transmission. The problem is that the engine is seized up and unable to turn, which means the torque converter is unable to be separated from the flywheel, which means that the TC has to come out with the engine. I found that I still had to remove the access cover under the engine, along with a couple of extra brackets then still wrestle the engine while it was swinging under the crane, finally using a crowbar to get the torque converter to slide free of the transmission. I'm sure I fucked up the front seal on the tranny in the process so I'll be replacing that. I was going to do that anyway but after pulling the engine I'm definitely going to have to do that. With the engine on the ground, the next order of business will be to pull all the usable parts from the dead engine as well as try to break down the engine so I can be able to rotate it some to access the torque converter bolts in order to remove the unit. When done I'll have a bunch of usable parts for the new engine (alternator, power steering pump, AC compressor, coils, fuel injectors, valve cover, coolant tube, etc) and a block that'll most likely end up going to scrap.
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