Hi everyone,

I'm doing a power steering rack for a family member on a 2002 Z28. A previous owner of the car must have cut the drivers side bolt (seemingly what most people do) that has no clearance to come out from the top. This made it easy to get the old rack out, but I want to install the bolt in correctly from the top this time, and the shop manual just says to pull the left motor mount bolt and raise the engine with a jack. Ok...but where can you safely put a block of wood and jack up the engine? I couldn't really find any information in the manual or by searching online about the best place to do that.

 

No you don't. This is an old car and we are at a point where we regularly go back and re-install parts that come to us from the parts store defective. The next time someone needs to change that rack out, it's going to be another pain in the rear. Someone has already done the heroics to resolve the problem and you would be spending the better part of a day to put it back to someone in the future will have to expend the same effort.

The car has many issues like this, where the car was put together for convenience of assembly in the factory and the service manual was written by individuals doing a complete tear-down. A few of these details/clashes got missed...

This thread talks about the bolt cutting procedure and has the proper bolt/nut sizes to put back in. You can use locking nuts or Nord-Lock washers if you have any unease about having the bolt on the bottom. https://ls1tech.com/forums/suspensio...-bolt-wtf.html


If you are still thinking of doing this, I just had to "lift" my engine in order to change my oil pan gasket. It was hell and took me an entire day. (I also have an engine hoist and a two post lift that I did this with. Doing this in a driveway is worse.) The engine doesn't simply "jack up" easy. You also need to remove the nut on the transmission support and take off the alternator and starter so you can disconnect the engine mounts. I removed the air box on the front of my engine and lifted it from the heads with an engine hoist. I assume you could jack it from the oil pan, but you'd have to do it in a way so the jack doesn't get in the way and would need to be very careful not to damage the oil pan with all that weight and pressure.

Even that may not be enough. As for the oil pan removal, you may need to drop the K Member. This requires more rusty bolts and disconnecting the stabilizer bar. When I disconnected my stabilizer bar, the rusty end links broke. The more you disconnect, the greater chance you have of running into other things you need to replace fix. (If you are doing this for a friend, I imagine the favor starts getting less great as this happens.)

 

I get what you're saying, but I'm definitely a do it by the book type of person on cars. Having a bolt ready to drop out the bottom does concern me, even with using threadlocker or something. I saw a few people that claimed getting the mount bolt pulled and getting the engine up wasn't that difficult vs cutting the bolt, so I was going off that.

In regards to the manuals take on the job, I'm not surprised if it downplays the difficulty. I have a 1995 shop manual that I think is put together and written really well, while this 2000 one I've been working on for this has steps out of order, missing information, or is vague at times.

 

I was like that too, until I got through my first decade with this car... I would have also had the concern with the bolt drop-out until I started gaining experience with the Nord-Lock washers. They are absolutely bomb-proof and magical. Even if you keep your course here, I encourage you to get some and experiment with them. (I just installed some on a boat in a high vibration application where thread locker and nylock nuts have failed and they are rock steady.)

If you want to keep course, here is a good thread that will instruct on the disconnection: https://ls1tech.com/forums/generatio...sket-swap.html

For what you are doing, you should also loosen the one bolt on the transmission support member. You can jack from the bottom or look on youtube for videos of people changing their oil pan gasket to see how to pick the engine from the top with a crane.

 

Cut the bolt here. SO much easier than lifting the motor and worked perfectly fine. And when you put in the replacement bolt you do it from the bottom so if it leaks in the future or you get a defective 1st unit, you just unbolt the 2 bolts and it drops out.

 

Done this twice, on two f-bodys. Just cut it and save your self the pain man.......

 

Fixed it for ya. Nordlock are the absolute **** and I would trust them in any and all application. I would 100% not go through the heartache of jacking up the engine, it's a pain in the dick.