So yeah, this weekend there was no Mirage news except today marked the first time it gave me trouble. It didn’t want to start from a cold start on the way home. Took me three attempts and it’s been fine since. No idea what happened but whatever.
I didn’t get any pictures on the lift because I was dead set on helping Nathan as much as possible, but that is the BMW we worked on; Bruce’s F10 535XD that we have in for some work. It’s getting some new gaskets, water pump and a turbo upgrade. Yesterday was the removal of the water pump and turbocharger. He’s sending off the compressor side for upgrade so the turbine side stayed bolted up.
We started by putting it on the lift and removing the front wheels. From there I started by removing all of the belly pans and the metal bash plate under those belly pans. By this time Nathan rounded up the speciality tools we would need and we started to unbolt the subframe to offer some room. We used an engine leveling device and went to work.
Once the subframe was dropped down a bit, I started removing the intake while Nathan removed the charge pipes; and from there we had clearance to get to the water pump. Nathan set out removing the hoses and electrical connector going to it and I grabbed the impact and zipped it off.
From here things got much harder. We was trying to remove the oil lines from the turbo itself but they were quite seized in place, so we decided to dismount them from the block itself instead. They’re in a very challenging spot and it requires two people. One to hold the extension and socket on the bolt (it’s a torx) and the other to operate the impact. My knuckles paid the price but we got it.
From there my long arms came in handy for ripping the water lines loose from the turbo, and Nathan began to separate the two halves of the turbo. Pry bar didn’t work, so about a 2ft section of chromoly bar stock and a mini sledge made it come loose without much negotiation.
The hardest part was fishing it out of the car. We now know fully dropping the subframe is indeed ideal and we’re going to do that to get it back in. With me doing some clever prying, Nathan got it out. Needless to say I’m very sore today!
All in all we did the water pump and turbo removal within 4 hours total. I’m really proud of that!
We will have YouTube coverage for the install of the upgrade. There was a sense of urgency for removal so we just knocked it out as fast as possible, but we fully intend to document the reinstallation process, so stay tuned.