SUMP O-RING RENEWAL

1

It sounds daft, but it’s important to pull the dipstick up. That’s because it’s entirely possible for it to get trapped when refitting the sump – imagine having to do this job twice! Whilst you’re up there, disconnect the battery negative terminal as we’ll be working on the starter motor – later.

2

 This is the view of the engine once the plastic under tray has been removed – on our car the fixings were all tired, so we drilled new holes and fitted new bolts.

The sump looks pretty accessible, though looks can be very deceptive. We found it surprisingly difficult to remove.

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The front exhaust downpipe has to come off first, but this is pretty easy – I had removed it recently in order to adjust the fit and prevent the annoying exhaust to body knocking on start-up. There is a triangular joint gasket here but no probe wiring that needs disconnecting.

4

The downpipe joins the exhaust manifold with three more studs and nuts that are easy to remove. There’s also the stainless steel support bracket as seen here but you shouldn’t have to remove that. Clean any penetrating fluid before refitting or it’ll stink on start-up.

5

This is the turbo oil return pipe that goes from the turbo down into the sump. It’s secured by a pair of easily accessible 5mm Allen bolts. There is a gasket here so make sure that you refit it on reassembly to avoid an annoying leak. Our gasket was the reusable metal type.

6

You can remove the two lower airconditioning compressor bracket 16mm bolts before or after the turbo oil drain back pipe. It’s not dowelled to the sump and you don’t have to remove the bracket or the crank pulley despite what the manuals might say. The bolts are 50Nm.

7

Remove the E18 Torx bolts that secure the driveshaft centre support to the sump. They are torqued to 20Nm on reassembly with a dab of threadlock. With the support unbolted from the sump, the driveshaft flexes – almost enough – to allow sump removal. Sadly not quite though.

8

On the back of the sump you will find this, the breather catch tank drain back pipe – a fantastic bit of car design as we’ll discover later. Whilst you are in there, disconnect the crank sensor as well as the oil level sensor that is fitted to the back off the sump – simple connectors.

9

This bracket here now needs to be removed in order to access the two 10mm bolts that secure the flywheel side cover to the gearbox. Like the annoying inlet manifold swap, this is one of those jobs where there seems to be a never-ending series of small things to disconnect.

10

Now, we need to remove the E18 Torx bolts (40Nm) that secure the gearbox bellhousing to the alloy sump. Our gearbox is the F40 unit as opposed to the troublesome M32 fitted to many lower-powered Vauxhalls and Saabs. The ‘notorious’ rear sump bolts are easy to take out.

11

Now we’ll drain the engine oil. The sump plug undoes and as it comes out it exposes a drain hole in the side of the hollow bolt. This allows the oil to drain out slowly. This oil is only 1000 miles old so it was drained into a clean container to be used again sometime – we can’t waste it.

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We mentioned notorious sump bolts a minute ago – on some cars – mainly those with the M32 gearbox, you just cannot access the rear sump bolts behind the flywheel. On the F40 ’box they are easily got out with a T40 Torx driver. On some you have to drill two holes in the bellhousing!

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The rest of the sump bolts are very easy to access and they are a mixture of T45 bolts on the sides and more T40’s at the crankshaft pulley end. One good thing about our engine is that despite its 12 years and 152,000 miles, it’s remarkably clean and dry with very few oil leaks.

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With the bolts removed, the sump will now need clouting to break the seal between sump and block. There is no paper gasket on these, just very tough black factory applied sealer. On Astra H and Insignia cars, the subframe is wider with more room to manoeuvre the sump.

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But try as we might, the sump just will not come out as one on the 9-3 with its Vectra C subframe. The problem is that there is a long oil drain back pipe that we unbolted in step 8 – it goes to the bottom of the sump and prevents the sump from being wiggled out – great.

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If it wasn’t for that, we think it might be possible to remove the sump without removing the driveshaft – that would save some time. But, we cracked on to remove the shaft and started by removing this E18 Torx bolt and 17mm securing clamp nut from the lower balljoint.

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With the nut and bolt removed, the iron hub is spread slightly with a long thin cold chisel to relinquish its grip on the balljoint. The lower wishbone is then pulled down to release the balljoint from the hub and the inner driveshaft carefully ‘sprung’ from the gearbox. It may leak oil.

18

There’s no need to remove the road wheel but if you’re brave enough to tackle this job on axle stands then it’s worth removing it. There are various different driveshaft nut sizes on GM and Fiat/saab cars and this one was a 32mm. It’s torqued up to 230Nm on reassembly.

19

Of course, the CV joint was seized solid into the drive flange – the driveshaft was not coming out today. We tied the inner driveshaft end up out of the way so we could wangle the sump past it. This rear engine steady bracket needs to come off – start by removing these 16mm bolts.

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Now remove or just slacken this centre bolt that joins the front and rear parts of the mounting – they are all torqued to 55Nm. The rusty looking vertical nuts/bolts to the left of the mounting also need to be removed and then the complete engine steady assembly comes off.

21

On some gearboxes, there will be oil loss when the inner driveshaft comes out so catch it. You may want to change the gearbox oil with the car in bits and on the F40 gearbox this is where the oil drain plug is – the refill plug is in the same place on the other, upper side of the ’box.

22

Because the oil drain back pipe from the oil separator into the sump is so long, we need to unbolt it from the back of the block. There are two 10mm bolts – virtually impossible to photograph – they secure the separator to the block. Remove them and pull the unit away.

23

We wanted to gain a bit more wiggle room to get the end of the sump past the subframe so we are going to unbolt the driver’s side engine mounting from the chassis leg and lift that side of the engine. Start by unplugging and removing the air filter box with the MAF.

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The engine mounting is very easy to disconnect – just undo and remove these three 16mm bolts as seen here. The engine won’t drop down – what you can do is lift the engine and place a block of wood between mount and chassis – three inches seemed to be about right.

25

Here, the car is up in the air and the engine has been raised slightly with a tall stand under the aircon compressor bracket. But no matter what was tried, the sump just was not coming out. Again, it was that stupid oil separator pipe that was too long to pull out of the sump.

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The geniuses that designed this engine ran the oil separator pipe behind the starter motor and it will just not pull up and through the gap between the starter and the block. So there is no option now but to remove three fiddly bolts and pull the starter off to give more clearance.

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 Finally! With the plastic pipe able to be pulled from the sump, it could be wiggled out. It’s a tight fit and a real nightmare to refit due to lack of clearance in there. Here we can see the ridiculous length of the drain back pipe – if only it was a couple of inches shorter. Madness.

28

Here is the sump as removed. It’s remarkably clean inside and has obviously had plenty of oil changes. You can see in the lower left corner of the sump the oil pick-up that’s bolted into the sump with two 10mm bolts. The oil feed hole corresponds with the one in the oil pump.

29

This is the new oil seal. £14.77 from my local Vauxhall main dealer. They sell a lot of these apparently with quite a few going to taxi operators who, stung by engine failures are dropping Insignia sumps for a bit of preventative maintenance. The part number is 55589549.

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Our old oil seal wasn’t in bad condition and it still had a bit of flexibility left although it wasn’t as supple as the new one. It is a press-fit into the oil pump with no sealer required. You can also see how incredibly clean the inside of the block is as well – we expected black death here.

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The new seal is fitted as shown with the red fitting cap. You press the seal into the pump firmly until fully located, and then the red cap just flicks off. Here, the block to sump mating face has already been cleaned of old gasket sealer and requires a wipe off before sump fitting.

32

The sump was cleaned inside and out with brake cleaner and the gasket face cleaned thoroughly. A neat bead of Elring sealer was applied and the sump refitted – that’s a very tricky job on the TTID so be careful. Now, you just need to reassemble it all – a solid day’s work.