Another winter engine change for the shop.

It looks like Dixie gets temporarily kicked out of the garage in the winter yet again. It happened, of course, to be during the biggest snow storm of the season so far. The other crappy thing is that I have got the boot also. Hmm, I am going to have to make this a quick one. It seems like I always have at least one engine change to do in the winter and it always seems to snow at the same time. This winter it is a 2000 GMC Yukon. It all started with me and a buddy looking at it and troubleshooting it because it wouldn't run. We quickly diagnosed a bad fuel pump. The problem was that as we were looking at it we noticed a lot of water in the oil. It was towed to my garage and the plan was to change the fuel pump and filter and let the owner drive it until the engine blows up. At this point the engine will spin a bearing at some point no matter what happens. The question is when will it happen not if. Anyways here it is in the garage all ready for a quick fuel pump change.

 The owner decided to be proactive and change the engine before it blows up so she won't have to chance breaking down on the side of the road. It's a good choice and that is what brought us to this point. We found a good running engine with 115,000 miles for $650.00 That's a bargain and so we picked it up. Here it is in the side of the garage that my bug usually sits and that is the reason the bug is outside. We decided to get it running by changing the fuel pump and then after Christmas is over we will start on the engine change.

 I am kinda excited about changing this engine. It has been a long time since I changed a small block Chevy.

 It is crammed in there like most cars these days but it shouldn't be too bad. I will blog about it so if yours is leaking water into the oil, (which is a problem with 5.3 liter Chevy engines) you might want to check it out. You can just change the head gaskets and possibly the heads if they are cracked but 9 times out of 10 it will spin a bearing sometime down the road. It's just cheaper to find a good engine that isn't leaking water and swap it.

It's hard to see here but the dipstick is pretty nasty looking. You can tell you have water in the oil when it looks like you have a milkshake on your dipstick.

 Here is the top of the dipstick. It is really rusted badly from the water in the oil.

 Another good way to check your engine is to pull the oil cap. It should be fairly clean and it should NOT look like this one. Here you can see more of the milkshake.

So that is the next few weekends for me. It should be fun. I am really trying to figure out why I haven't run my gas line out to the garage for the heater I have sitting in my basement. I never seem to think about it until I have projects like this in the middle of winter. I really need to get that gas line run. Anyways, if you want to know how to change a fuel pump and filter on a 2000 Yukon or Tahoe check back tomorrow and I will post how to do it. It should be a quick job which is good because I still need to go Christmas shopping and it's suppose to snow. That means that there is doughnuts to do in an empty parking lot somewhere. See you tomorrow!