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They don't make this easy and clearly assembled the engine before putting it in...
FWIW, back in the mid 70s, GM shoehorned a small block V8 in the Monza as a factory option, but didn't allow enough room to change two of the spark plugs. Here's a 1975 newspaper article on the subject:
On my 1966 Corvair, it has one bolt on the steering gearbox that is inaccessible. The factory service manual has details of exactly where to drill a hole in the inner fender so you can snake a socket in there. Worked like a champ.
To move that fat harness out of the way, disconnect as many connectors for as many items in that corner as you can including the coil pack and maybe fuel inj connectors for the back cylinders and then there are some nuts that hold the plastic cover that goes over the wiring harness behind the throttlebody that you remove and then you can slide that plastic cover off the studs and then the harness can be pulled up
To move that fat harness out of the way, disconnect as many connectors for as many items in that corner as you can including the coil pack and maybe fuel inj connectors for the back cylinders and then there are some nuts that hold the plastic cover that goes over the wiring harness behind the throttle body that you remove and then you can slide that plastic cover off the studs and then the harness can be pulled up
I looked at it again yesterday which is probably the last one I'll have till spring but maybe not, two 60F days in late November was a surprise so maybe again?
The removal of the FI and ignition harness is what occured to me as being the only way to possibly be able to get more of that crap out of the way. I worry a lot about damaging that though. Jaguar plastic bits and connectors are crap. That and taking the solenoid off the top of the EGR. I just don't KNOW for certain if that will make a difference? Can you confirm this? See, nobody mention this in any of the older instructions unless I missed it? But it's clear to me that WO getting much better visual access I can't get reliable access to those bolts.
I've stuffed my arm behind the engine all the way up to my elbow just to put my fingers on the bolt head so that I can slip the socket onto the bolt with a long extension on it. I have lots of scars on my left forearm to prove it! But that doesn't work well enough and it's extremely frustrating.
With the top obstructions removed at least I could possible see when I had the socket properly in place. The solenoid definitely has to come off for that. If that still didn't allow for bolt removal (mine are well rounded now) then I could possibly try and cut the heads off. But even with that I don't know if I'd be able to ever get it pulled back enough to allow for removal . I'd have to free up the other end. The nuts on those studs are accessible for me but I worry that they might just snap off. I have kroil and can soak them well so I suppose doing that before I totally give up is worth a shot. If the bolts come out WO cutting the heads off then I guess I could pull the valve away enough to go forward and then replace it with a new one all the while leaving the SS tube attached to the exhaust manifold????
Anyone care to speculate as to whether it's possible to extract the rest of the EGR if the bolt heads are cut off?
Frankly this is all wreaking of the smell of a junker. I'm not paying to have the engine pulled, fixed and installed. The likelihood of that going well by anyone not personally invested in the car are nil. It won't be me. I have two other car projects each worth at least 25 times what this car is worth. So that would be a fool's errand.
I've had to endure so many PITA repairs on this car so there's no assurance that there won't be plenty more even if I did get past this one. It's 15 years old and it's been the worst are I've ever had to keep car of. No more Jaguars in my future unless they're leased and gone in three years. This is why I hesitant to soldier on much longer. I pretty much know what's coming if I do and it would be an absolutely miracle if this car settled down and became reliable again for a long stretch.
My car doesn't look like that. There's no way I can get that view from the side at the rear. Is that a photo from a phone slipped into the abyss?
It does look like you were able to get the harness out of the way somewhat but perhaps still not enough. Maybe with that and the solenoid I could see well enough from the top?
I did a lot of swearing and bleeding as well. I’m 6 foot six and I have huge hands. Soooooo I feel your pain. I must’ve been working on those boats for several hours dropping sockets cussing rearranging standing up sitting down jacking you up jacking down crawling on top of the engine try to slide my hand up from the bottom around the side down from the top. It’s hard.
yes I got those pictures by sliding my phone inside the slots and just blasting away and then deleting the ones that didn’t come out.
I also experimented with the old EGR after I got it off to see what was made out of. These pics may help you decide whether or not to go this route. I do know that after those two vertical bolts for the cap are out you can remove the top of the EGR valve. You might have to crank out on it a little bit because it doesn’t want to come off. But once you get it off you can remove that section of aluminum that has the cooling tubes on it for the hoses and then you’ll have a perfect view of the bolts from the top which if you can’t get on with a wrench or socket you could cut or grind off from the top I believe. Here are some more pictures
What about the viability of then being able to slide the EGR back off of the frozen bolts still in the body? I assume the flexible SS tube would have to come off of the other end first ... or can it be disconnected from the EGR itself at that point?
Thanks.
BTW I can spot the Jaguar bites on your hands ...
Originally Posted by Aarcuda
I did a lot of swearing and bleeding as well. I’m 6 foot six and I have huge hands. Soooooo I feel your pain. I must’ve been working on those boats for several hours dropping sockets cussing rearranging standing up sitting down jacking you up jacking down crawling on top of the engine try to slide my hand up from the bottom around the side down from the top. It’s hard.
yes I got those pictures by sliding my phone inside the slots and just blasting away and then deleting the ones that didn’t come out.
I also experimented with the old EGR after I got it off to see what was made out of. These pics may help you decide whether or not to go this route. I do know that after those two vertical bolts for the cap are out you can remove the top of the EGR valve. You might have to crank out on it a little bit because it doesn’t want to come off. But once you get it off you can remove that section of aluminum that has the cooling tubes on it for the hoses and then you’ll have a perfect view of the bolts from the top which if you can’t get on with a wrench or socket you could cut or grind off from the top I believe. Here are some more pictures
As Aarcuda mentioned you will have an excellent view of the two difficult horizontal bolts holding the EGR valve to the intake elbow once you remove the two vertical bolts that hold the solenoid, then remove the solenoid AND then remove the alloy cooling housing under the solenoid as well - that the two hoses connect to.
The alloy cooling housing sitting under the solenoid will likely not easily come off its iron base (of which the iron base is welded to the lower flexible portion), so may need some slight force. If the alloy cooling housing doesn't easily want to budge or you can't remove it then try just to hack off as much of the inlet and outlet tubes as possible of the alloy housing.
Then fit two of your sockets that are the tightest fit over each bolt and screw away (hopefully!).
Once you get to that point meaning there will no longer be a solenoid and no longer be an alloy cooling housing below the solenoid and the troublesome horizontal bolts removed then yes it's no longer attached and will flex away from the inlet elbow. And once you get a new alloy cooling housing, solenoid and the correct gaskets then theoretically you would not have to remove the flexible base from the RHS exhaust manifold and just bolt it all back.
Source the solenoid, cooling housing and gaskets first or it maybe much cheaper and much easier to get a good used complete assembly (and fresh inlet manifold and exhaust manifold gaskets).
I've noticed a difference on the base of the flexible tube that bolts to the RHS exhaust manifold from the x202 STR to your x204 or x206? STR. They're probably interchangeable but the gasket between the base of the tube to exhaust manifold needs to be the correct one for the year of EGR valve tube.
But if you only manage to just get the bolt heads removed (and the remaining bolt body still stuck in there), then the EGR valve tube probably won't bend away from the supercharger inlet elbow. You will have to remove the two rusty nuts holding the base of the flexible tube (on the exhaust manifold); you could try it but I'm thinking it may be too hard to even think about unbolting the tube from its upper iron part, my bolts were okay on the heads but very rusty on the threads.
Remember these two nuts on the exhaust manifold would be very rusty by now and need to be changed and not as difficult to remove.
Ya. What he said.
he’s right about that gasket at the end of the flexible tube. the gasket I initially ordered had a hole through it which was either too small or too big I can’t remember right now and I had to try to find the correct one. I found that taking the nuts for the flexible tube at the exhaust manifold was a piece of cake compared to everything else. I wouldn’t attempt to take the flexible tube off the EGR until it was all out on the bench because that looks impossible to get to due the angle
I'm going to guess that the bolt heads will have to be cut off because they are already rounded. I only have sockets for removing damaged bolt heads, no box wrenches like that. If what I'm hearing is that the alloy housing with the two hose tubes is not likely to come off once the solenoid bolts are removed then all of this looks to me like a waste of time.
It's not clear to me that even a breaker bar with the socket on it could be operated from above in that case???? At a minimum I need to be able to see the bolt heads from above so that I can possibly though not very likely at this point get the damaged bolt head removing sockets on an extension and hopefully break them loose.
But let me try and ask this very pointed question again hopefully WO alternative suggestions this time. I say this because I firmly beleive that this is probably the only way to get this thing out now.
I'm thinking about cutting the heads off so that the valve will possibly slide off the bolts assuming I can detach the SS tube from the exhaust manifold.
Is that even possible knowing how long those bolts are? Or alternatively could I slide it off far enough to get a saw behind the flange, cut again and then hope that I can get the remaining portion of the bolt extracted once everything is out?
If not then I think I'm just stuck and I know what to do in that case.
As Aarcuda mentioned you will have an excellent view of the two difficult horizontal bolts holding the EGR valve to the intake elbow once you remove the two vertical bolts that hold the solenoid, then remove the solenoid AND then remove the alloy cooling housing under the solenoid as well - that the two hoses connect to.
The alloy cooling housing sitting under the solenoid will likely not easily come off its iron base (of which the iron base is welded to the lower flexible portion), so may need some slight force. If the alloy cooling housing doesn't easily want to budge or you can't remove it then try just to hack off as much of the inlet and outlet tubes as possible of the alloy housing.
Then fit two of your sockets that are the tightest fit over each bolt and screw away (hopefully!).
Once you get to that point meaning there will no longer be a solenoid and no longer be an alloy cooling housing below the solenoid and the troublesome horizontal bolts removed then yes it's no longer attached and will flex away from the inlet elbow. And once you get a new alloy cooling housing, solenoid and the correct gaskets then theoretically you would not have to remove the flexible base from the RHS exhaust manifold and just bolt it all back.
Source the solenoid, cooling housing and gaskets first or it maybe much cheaper and much easier to get a good used complete assembly (and fresh inlet manifold and exhaust manifold gaskets).
I've noticed a difference on the base of the flexible tube that bolts to the RHS exhaust manifold from the x202 STR to your x204 or x206? STR. They're probably interchangeable but the gasket between the base of the tube to exhaust manifold needs to be the correct one for the year of EGR valve tube.
But if you only manage to just get the bolt heads removed (and the remaining bolt body still stuck in there), then the EGR valve tube DEFINITELY won't bend away from the supercharger inlet elbow. You will have to remove the two rusty nuts holding the base of the flexible tube (on the exhaust manifold); you could try it but I'm thinking it may be too hard to even think about unbolting the tube from its upper iron part, my bolts were okay on the heads but very rusty on the threads.
Remember these two nuts on the exhaust manifold would be very rusty by now and need to be changed and not as difficult to remove.
The first highlighted text makes absolutely no sense to me? The second I corrected and is why I asked about sliding away with the exhaust manifold portion detatched. And yes I am loathe to do that as the stude is very rusty so it would need to be meticulously wire brushed first, perhaps then a thread chaser utilized and even then the nut might be on so tight that the stud snaps.
I don’t know what he means by iron base being welded to the flexible. There’s a stainless steel flexible tube between the EGR and the exhaust manifold. It’s bolted on to The exhaust manifold at one end and the EGR valve at the other as you can see in the picture. I’m pretty sure that when I was taking all these pictures I disassembled my old EGR valve to see if I can get that aluminum portion off its base and I believe I did. Let me see if I can find pictures because I deleted a lot of them because they were on my phone taking up space
Nope no pictures left. If you can get that flexible tube off the exhaust manifold in the bottom of the EGR valve then there’s nothing stopping you from taking a saws all or a hacksaw and just chopping the heads those boats right off and sliding the EGR valve out. I’ll be cautious about cutting in between the EGR valve a and the throttlebody because if you hit that mating surface you’re going to cause a leak. And you’re definitely gonna touch it at least once or twice.
Aarcuda is right:
"Ya. What he said." "I found that taking the nuts for the flexible tube at the exhaust manifold was a piece of cake compared to everything else". "If you can get that flexible tube off the exhaust manifold in the bottom of the EGR valve then there’s nothing stopping you from taking a saws all or a hacksaw and just chopping the heads those boats right off and sliding the EGR valve out."
The exhaust manifold nuts are very easy to get to and remove. Mine were extremely rusty but came off well. Tried a few sockets until I got a tight fit over each nut.
If the alloy housing with the 2 tubes is stubborn I would try and grab it with some large pliers and try and twist it away from the iron base. There is a gasket in between the 2 metals so it should come off.
Remove the main loom nut and push that loom back towards the firewall, should give you some more room.
Remove as many of the ancillaries giving you some more room to get the tools in.
Side issue, which may be important for you if you need to obtain another flexible tube you will note in the below photos the x202 flexible tube and x206 flexible tube are very different. My x202 must all be SS with no top or bottom welds as per x206; which appears to have an iron top, iron bottom and SS middle flex tube. Probably a few reasons why the change from Jaguar.
So, the x206 EGR layers are; solenoid on top/then gasket/then alloy cooling tube/then probably another gasket below/then iron body where the 2 horizontal bolts go then gasket below/then iron top welded to SS flexible tube welded to bottom iron/then gasket.
As said with its base detached from the exhaust manifold and the top bolt heads cut, both styles of this flex tube should come away from the bolts shafts still stuck in there.
From there you could go further and pull the whole SC/SC inlet elbow out of the vehicle and remove the bolts on the bench or keep bending your back by leaving everything in and trying to remove the bolts.
X206 SS flex tube has iron top bolted to iron where troublesome horizontal bolts insert. Too hard also to remove these bolts in blue circle. Photo: Aarcuda Push loom sitting on top of solenoid away. Loom nut. Rusty nuts came off easy X202 flex tube appears to be all SS and smaller diameter. SS flex tube bolted to iron. Bottom weld on x206 flex tube. Requires different 'base to exhaust manifold' gasket, compared to x202 base. x202 base does pivot around flex shaft. Looks like above x206 base may be fixed. Photo: Aarcuda. Top weld on x206 flex shaft. Photo: Aarcuda
Last edited by jya; 11-23-2020 at 09:09 PM.
Reason: Typo
OK then I'll have another look at that as a possibility. I suppose I might as well pop the solenoid off and see how much that helps since the EGR valve is still available. If I am able to get at the bolts with a special socket then great and if all goes **** up what difference does it make.
The junk dealer won't give a crap. I think I'm going to need a small specialized mini saw for this.
Lots of very nice condition parts are on this car ... IF YOU CAN GET THEM OFF!
NOPE! I can gain access to one of bolts of the solenoid but the other is just too blocked and I suspect will remain so no matter how I manipulate that huge wiring harness. It is right over the top of the bolt. I leveraged a good sized crow bar between the top of the solenoid and opened up some clearance but not enough to get the socket on squarely so that I can try to take it out. Both sides of the harness are out of the that plastic retainer meant to secure them so that's not the problem. When I try to flex the harness it's more like a piece of pipe than a wiring harness.
I think the sawzall to cut the GD harness off is all that will work and that's not feasible.
I should have just gone to a dealer and had the entire engine pulled. This going nowhere.
So can I just cut off the part this egr is attached to and order a whole new manifold or what ever?
I'm not sure I could even operate my sawzall in this confined space?
Even if I could get the solenoid off It doesn't look like I have any space to work those other two bolts out because the harness is in the way of just about everything.
So I did manage to rip the harness attachment off of the back of the head hoping that loosening up that would provide some relief but no.
Even when I can get a crowbar in there to push back the harness enough the leverage point on the valve is right next to bolt and thus blocks getting the socket on.
This doesn't want or deserve to be fixed so after almost 2 years I've finally had enough.
Here's a photo of how I left it. Trust me when I say non of that crap can be budged out of the way for access.
Are you sure you disconnected every connector or sensor from the harness? Mine was stiff but once disconnected (possibly even from the ecu) there was lots of room. Pull out the Christmas tree plastic clips. Disconnect that connector on the bracket by the right side shock tower in front of the CC air filter box too!
if still to tight- Fark it. Cut the friggen egr tube off and find another. They arent cheap new if theyre even available so find one first
11-21-2020, 02:45 PM
