LSXcalade Returns: Pulling The OG LSX 427 For Upgrades & Refresh! (Its a Mess) Plus Tech Tips!

Okay. Now we're free. Because this is real. This isn't sunshine and rainbows like the rest of the freaking YouTube where everyone's like, "Hey, today we're going to work on some no one cares about." No, this is real work. And I'm going to show you how I really feel. You could literally walk over and fart on me because you do that sometimes. You should dump things on girls and fart in front of them. Those are my two tips. Today is a monumental moment because we will be turning wrenches on the Escalade for the first time since November to pull the motor out. Well, what's left of the motor? Uh it's going to get pulled out and redone. So, time to dig it out of hibernation and figure out what the heck is going on in there. You've never worked on this thing before or ever really done anything with it. It's just been sitting here for forever. Yeah. Now you're going to figure out what it's all about. But first of all, we're going to push this poor thing back over there so we can like get this out. Everything has just been kind of shoved over here to get the lift erected. So, yeah, that's why it's all the way over here. It's not going to be like that. Just had to get stuff out of the way. But we got to push the Monte Carlo forward to slide Mr. Escalade back here. And I don't even think we're going to bother like backing it in or anything cuz you know, once the motor comes out, it's just going to get pushed right back to this spot anyway. So, why would we why would we straighten it out? Yeah, no point. Yeah. All right, well, let's get pushing. I'm not hitting anything up there, are we? I know. Cool. I like how we don't check first. We start shoving things. already knew it. That's cool. It's good. Still waiting on a transmission. Everything everywhere. 3 days ago. What? I put that there like 3 days ago. Put what there? All those tools? Oh, yeah. No one's touched them. Yeah. Okay, we're getting somewhere now. Pushing's all in your legs. Yeah, I see. Yeah. Is there anything behind us over there? Yeah, hold on. Okay. Let's just run it over. Oh, yeah, that's not going to move. Well, it's not even going to be in like a work spot, but it'll be good cuz we can plug that light in and we'll see everything we need to see. When I took the heads off, it was only supposed to be a quick thing. So, I just kind of sprayed oil on everything, threw a trash bag over it. Well, you know, humidity change. I think we got a little bit of surface rust on here. Which is really big deal cuz the blocks can get torn out of nothing anyway and completely gone over for like half-inch head studs and stuff. But, let's see what we got going on here. Are you ready? I know for a lot of you this is probably the first time you've ever seen this thing because the last time we did anything with it I had like 30,000 subscribers. That's a lot a lot a lot of you ago. So, if you're new here, this is that. This is what we're working with. Welcome to the club. We uh we got to pull the hood off first cuz we're going to have to pull it off to get this thing out anyway. So, Let's do it. So, the hood is off. No time lapse for you because that's useless footage. You don't learn anything. It wastes everyone's time including SD card space. So, suck it. Hood is off. This is what we got to work with. You can see this is the cylinder that went bye-bye uh out the front of the head. And all the other ones are still carboned up because this one got steam cleaned with some uh coolant and water. But, yeah, got the four hood bolts. You know what you do with hood bolts when you take them out? Put them in your pocket. Well, after you put them in your pocket. Put them in a ziplock baggie. Even better. We put them back in the hood. You throw them in the holes. Oh, that's what I thought. That's just what I like to do. Because you can lose bags. Mhm. What? You can pick it up. Yeah, we'll have to set it up like pick it up a little bit. Here, do you want to pick it up? Do you want me to pick it up? Yeah. You have to pick up one side of it. Do two at a Do two at a time, yeah. Oh. That's okay. Uh yeah, we don't have to do even that far. Just we don't want to scratch the vinyl on the floor. And you thread it in enough that it's not going to like accidentally spin a couple times and fall back out. So, you know, get some turns in there. Okay, now that's all in there. Uh John borrowed my spark plug wires once on the CTS-V and he didn't put them back in there, which is cool. Um but yeah, we got this whole mess here. We're going to have to take the water pump off. Um the AC has to get unbolted. Pretty much just getting stuff out of the way. All this is already off the motor. It's just chilling here looking stupid. Wow, it has been a long time since I've been under here. Lot of memories in this engine bay. Some I'd like to forget. I'm starting to remember why I didn't want to touch this thing for so long. All right, let's do some work. First step, let's get this rad hose off so we can pull the water pump assembly out. It's quite handy that you fit in there cuz I don't I don't You can. Put everything in bags and label them. The like entire rest of the Escalade is in labeled bags inside of there with all the other stuff that came off of this. So, putting it back together we're putting it together like a model car. Those are the motor mount bolts. By the way. I just started taking those off cuz it seemed to be easy. Break them loose with the regular ratchet. And now we got to do that thing won't probably won't be strong enough to get them, so we'll have to use this thing. I have to do these bolts every single time I take the transmission out. Except they're never this easy to get to. They're always under a bunch of stuff. That's always fun. And they're always extremely tight. Cuz I think there's like that factory GM frame goo that they put on these things. I think it's like in the threads and acting as a kind of a natural thread locker. Which is cool until you want it to come off easily. Here's where I mash my fingers up this block. I am. No, the people in the camera. You guys are terrible. I lied to you. There. I've already messed my fingers up enough. You want to do to do that anymore. I mean I got them a little bit, but These are the original motor mount bolts. But I may not reach that one. No, it won't reach either of them. Do you have like a shorter one? Yeah. Got some new tools on the way, too. I think. Good. Huh? It's a different That works. It does? Yeah, it just is for like different points. Like sometimes it's 12-point or 6-point. Mine There you go. Aha. That smells bad. That's the brushes in the drill. Now, we can take this off, and that's just three 10 mm. And since you're all already standing in there, it's just uh there's one, two, three right down here. And then one, two, three right down there. And we'll just throw them all in the same bag cuz I know what they are. That doesn't sound good. They're too tight. Let the gun Let Let it eat. Well, really? Yeah. Okay. Ow. That noise is it doing its impacting to get it off. Are you stuck in there? There you go. Huh, I typically pull the fans out and everything to do this, but we'll pull it if we need to. Um and Just Yeah. Well, there we got a problem. I think we may have to take fans out. Actually, I think we probably will because uh it it makes life easier. We'll just take them out, but when we pull this motor out, we're going to have to get it out and then turn it and take it out this way. That's uh that's how I've done all of these before. Cool. So, I'll pull the fan out real quick. Messed up my hands some more. But, it's cool. Yep, now it's off. Here, you What do you want me to You're going to pull that out. You got to wrangle that water pump. God damn it. Babe, it's heavy. It's not that heavy. It's just awkward. This is awkward. The key is to like take the tension off the bolt when you're trying to get the last few threads out with your hands. Which I'm trying to do. Let go of a little bit. Yeah. When you pull up on it, it puts tension on that bolt, too. My bad. It's okay, you're learning. That's the point of learning. Almost there. Okay, you can pull it out now. That. Well, you keep it at the angle that it was, and it won't Well, I didn't know. That's why I just told you. Yeah, after the fact that I got it everywhere. Not everywhere. I saved you from getting it more places. We're going to put this right by the door, so if it leaks, we can just broom it out the door. Actually, don't tell anyone that. Now, we're going to unbolt the AC. Those are 15s. Well, I kind of can't get to it. Yeah, it'll be ratchet wrench time. There's no tensioner on this belt. It's a stretch fit, and this is like the little tool that you use to take it on and off. It's kind of awesome. But, some of you may know, on the Silverados, Tahoes, Suburbans, whatever of this era, some of them have a tensioner down here. And if you go turbo, um the AC belt flies off all the time, or like boosted, whatever. Doesn't like to stay on there. Ditch that tensioner and go to the stretch belt of the newer ones. So, if you have a I don't know, an '07 to I don't know what year it was. Whatever, that has a the tensioner on there and you it keeps flying off, go to the store, ask them for an AC belt from a 2013 Escalade, gets you one of these dinghies, put that on there and it will never fly off again. Okay, so here's how this little dinghy works here. You got to get the Brazilian point socket cuz there's an ARP crank bolt in here. Put this on the remove side. There's like a little lip here for the the balancer. Right under there. Make sure the belt's on there. And turn it. I think I need some help. We got to give it give it some a little bit of guidance sometimes. Like that. Now we can crank a little more, it'll come off. Here we go. Should have done this first, it would have made it easier to take this off, but you know, I kind of forgot that I had this little tool here. Cuz if you don't have it, getting these things on and off is like a pain in the dick. Now it's off, so we can proceed. We can probably get most of the bell housing bolts from the top, maybe even the converter bolts, but the converter bolts would be easier to do from underneath still. Uh we got to get the converter bolts unbolted, then do the bell housing bolts, and find a chain. This thing's pretty much ready to yank. Going under to drop the starter to get to the converter bolts and it's an it's a freaking oily mess under here cuz it had it had an oil leak from the valve cover that I like couldn't find for forever. It never got in a header, it just leaked down like into the the valley and down the back of the motor just disgusting. Buh. What? Going to buzz that off and get these converter bolts out. So, just been getting these converter bolts out. We got three of them out. Uh Logan was holding and rotating the engine for me until I realized I could rotate it myself down here because there's no heads on it with no push rod resistance, no spark plugs, no compression. It's easy to turn. So, I can do that myself, but she still has to hold it for me while I get these off because I put thread locker on here and they are tight. I've been in this place many times. Um usually when I'm doing transmission I got to do it by myself, so I have like that long ratchet kind of convoluted like above my head. Apparently a couple mosquitoes got in here and attacked Logan. Yeah, pisses me off. Yeah, I hate them. We we should get a nice redneck bug light in here and just zap them all. Agreed. I'm all about it. Ooh. So, yeah. Have you ever seen those salt rifles like shoot mosquitoes and stuff with? Really? Yeah, it's like you shoot salt at them. Yeah, we need one. Oh, I thought you said assault, not just salt. A salt rifle. Wow. So, a salt. Well, dang. It's freaking disgusting under here. They're like the tennis rackets that are like You like zap them. Yeah. Those are fun, too. I've never had one, though. I didn't grow up in the south. Oh. We did normal things. fun way to kill bugs. We did normal things for fun, like go to the movies or, you know, like take hairspray and a lighter and light spiders on fire. All right. Well, anyway, are you ready to hold? Yeah, I have a hold of it now. Okay, it's good. killed all the mosquitoes. All right. You have to hold harder. I am trying. Move it up more and then hold harder so when you come down, it's in my wheelhouse. What do you mean move it up more? Rotate it. Yeah, there you go. Okay, now hold it there. Okay. We're good. You don't have to hold it anymore. All right, it hurts my titties. What? I'm balanced on this wheel and I have to push my titties into the metal and my arm hurts. Oh, boy. Yeah, doing this hurts my titties, too. Yeah, it's a hard life. Heh heh, no pun intended. Yeah, your life is really hard. Now the convertible bolts are out. We can get to the bell housing bolts. I think probably all of them we can get to from the top, but since it's jacked up, I'm going to take the bottom ones off just cuz it may be easier to do that while still in the air. I'd rather do that than uh put it back on the ground and realize I can't reach them. So, that is what we will do. This thing is an oily freaking mess under there. Back of the motor and transmission area is just It's freaking disgusting. Yeah, once this motor's out and you know, Uncle Rob is 4L80 swapped and all that stuff, the Escalade roller is getting pushed outside and pressure washed until it's freaking clean cuz I can't stand working on this thing like looking like a freaking dump truck. Like I work on Elvis and don't get this greasy. It's disgusting under there. Your hands look disgusting and all you were doing was like you know, stuff up here. Mhm. Yeah, it sucks. And it's got all the fuzzies from the downpipe uh wrap kind of get stuck in there. Makes your arms a little itchy. Be like that sometimes. You know what I always say, you're not working till you're bleeding. And uh I'm working. Are you working? I hope not. Okay, so why Why did you feel it was necessary to turn the camera on right now? Because it's hilarious. Why? Because you look like a big old monkey football. Call me a monkey. Mhm, yeah. Cool. I'm getting the lower downpipe bolt off. As you can hear, there's not much movement between it and the exhaust. I couldn't get a good angle on it from the bottom. I couldn't get a good angle on it from the front. So, I've gone full football mode. I should have done this. Would have been all kinds of fun. Haha. Haha. This is relatively boring. You can probably stop the clip now. I'm amused. So, turns out I was able to get to all of these from the top except that very bottom one I took out from the bottom. Yeah, I'm just in here getting laughed at the whole time. Yeah, I don't even know what that is. Guess you guys find out. Just trying to do work, getting freaking fried. It'd be like that. But, I do believe that was the last one. We can put this thing on the ground. I'll be able to feel my feet again. And get the cherry picker up in here. Pick this thing out. I'm sure once we pick it up we'll have to like hold all kinds of crap out of the way. God, this is so freaking gross. It pains me to see cuz when I built this thing I spent hours so many hours cleaning, wiping off, sanding, painting every little freaking part. Now it's just covered in goo and crap and road debris cuz I probably put like 10,000 mi in this thing, at least. It has been all over the place. And the engine has never come out. Till today. I know there's always a couple people in the comments like, "Hey, quit complaining." Well, you know what, sunshine? World ain't always great. There's things that you don't like. There's things that annoy you. And that's fine. You're allowed to be annoyed by things. I'm allowed to be annoyed by things. And I'm allowed to tell you about them because this is real. This isn't sunshine and rainbows like the rest of the freaking YouTube where everyone's like, "Hey, today we're going to work on some no one cares about." No, this is real work. And I'm going to show you how I really feel. Just double-checking. Seeing if there's anything I can easily get out of the way. I mean, all this stuff is just not going to get out of the way until we pick it up and just, you know, help coax it over, but all the bolts are out. This will This is free. It'll fall out once it's up high enough. I think we're ready to go. I've never actually used this particular hoist thingy before. It's a little weird. Uh last time this engine went in and out, it was at my old garage in Pennsylvania where there was a beam in the roof with like a little chain hoist thingy. I haven't used one of these cherry pickers in a long time. I like my chain hoist beam thingy. I wish there was one in here. Maybe I can add one. I don't know. You posting freaking poop memes of me. I already did. Cool. You know, what are your thoughts on this whole experience? You're grumpy. I'm over it. What? I'm in the zone. I'm also grumpy, but I'm in the zone. I'm well aware. I use my difference. Well, have you ever seen both at the same time? Yeah, and it's not pretty. It's We know. I don't like when things get in my way. And right now, this engine still being here is in my way, and I'm determined to get it out. Because if I don't get it out today, then I will lose the day. And I can't lose the day anymore. So, let's get it out. Let's do it. Freaking throwing shade at me like I'm some kind of jerk. You know. You are grumpy. I'm just That's all I said. focused on winning. Mhm. You know, they said Michael Jordan was a dick, too. I never called you a dick. I just said you were grumpy. I was very nice. Yeah, well, what were you really thinking? You could be a little nicer at moments. uh yep, we're we're having fun. We just gave each other for fun. It's how it is. Yep. If this will work Oh, I just noticed now I can move this this thing back farther, which is what I'm going to do. I put it bolted it here cuz this would have, you know, hung up on this, but I can move that. So, I'm going to move it. And we will then pull this out. Not quite yet cuz I didn't notice that before. Oops. Okay, now move that thing back one hole. I moved that bolt back a little bit. Let's see if we can yank this out. Here, we'll capture the freaking destruction. Yeah, I've actually never pulled this motor out with a cherry picker. It's always been the little thingamajigger in my roof. So, this will be interesting. I mean, it's about to catch on all kinds of Is my thought. Like, can we move this out of the way and pull the cherry picker forward so it's not going to hit on this, too? Yeah, we're going to have to figure out a different way to pick this thing up cuz this is not going to I don't like that little bracket thing at all. We're going to have to like get things out of the way as it gets picked up. Just due to the way that it's freaking all piled in here. Mhm. We're going to need a jack on the transmission. Okay. All right, now we're free. We're off the dowels, off the transmission. Oh, there's always something that you forget about until you start pulling the motor. Which is just kind of something I factor into it whenever I pull a motor. Is, you know, you just pull it slow and the dash 40 and oil feed line for the turbos comes off the back of the block like right back here. That was still connected and hanging us up a little bit. But I got it now. I think we are free. Steering shaft on the motor mount. We could just take the motor mount off, but you know, why would we do that when we could try to do it the hard way first? Kobe. Did it. It's out. I mean, it's not out yet, but like it's out. Yeah. Oh, dipstick. Huh? The dipstick. Mhm. That's a thought. Yeah. Good job. Okay. Never mind. We found one more thing that was still hooked up. But, you know, this is comes with the territory. Here's the rotating part I was talking about. As we…