Let me get my bearings...

So, on Saturday I went to spend some time with Urge. I figured it was about time to pull a couple of the bearings out so that I could order some new ones and replace the darn things. After all, the ground is beginning to thaw which means that I can actually stand to be outdoors for more than 10 minutes, and Urge is no longer an icy buscicle coffin waiting for me to freeze to death.

So, anyways.

The crankshaft is kind of hidden behind these two sets of metal plates. I whipped out my manual. "Supports" they are called....

well, duh.
Apparently they play a crucial role in keeping the crank in place since it is so big and heavy. When you remove them, you actually have to make shims before putting the bolts back in place, so a trip to the local hardware store was in order. They didn't have the right size, so a little fab was necessary.

Whoa, I am getting a little ahead of myself.

BACK UP!
First of all,
The bolts.
Were huge.
ARE huge. I peered down at my tool options. I had my little craftsman ratcheting wrench in my hand. Erm... I don't think so.
I grabbed my favorite Snap-On breaker bar, placed it over the bolt, and pulled with ALL OF MY STRENGTH!
Nothing.
I then repositioned the angle, and forced all of my weight upon it, letting my feet come off of the floor.
Nothing.
I had just so happened to still have the handle to my aluminum jack handy: laying patiently across the top of the motor, gleaming sparkly blue (I swear that's not the reason that I bought it!) as if to say, "You're gonna neeeeeeeed meeeeeeeee!!!"
Humph. I was gonna need a whole lot more than just that. I would rather break the Craftsman wrench than the Snap-On bar, so the jack handle went over the end of the Craftsman wrench and then I called in for backup! Thankfully, Dave had come with me on this bus trip because he had needed to use the shop to fix some subframe something-or-other on his GTi. When he snapped the bolts loose, they made this wonderful metallic snapping noise! I thought the wrench had broken or something, but nope!

One of the other guys in the shop had turned his head to look over at where the sound had come from. "Wow!" he said. "Now, here's a question, before you take any more off, do you have a torque wrench to put those things back on?"
Hmmm... good question. I didn't even know what the torque spec was. Thankfully, the manual was handy... "250 to 260 foot pounds" Dave read to me from the book. "Holy Moly!" I exclaimed, "that's AMAZING!"

Every time I hang out with this motor, I think that my bus is even more amazing.

Alright, so I got the supports off, time to remove the caps. BUT WAIT! What is the most important thing that you must do first??
(Oh, C'mon, you MUST KNOW by now!)

Labeling!! With metal pieces, you do this with punches, of course. Just like I did on the inside of the heads. As I further inspected the rod caps, though, I noticed something WONDERFUL!

Someone had already done it for me!! Does this mean that the motor had been rebuilt before?? And there were some initials stamped into the tops of the main bearing caps. "AW" hmm... interesting.
I speculated for a bit and then moved on to taking off the caps and removing the lower bearing shells of one main bearing and one rod bearing, to see the size so I would know what to order.

Here they are! Both lower shells in all of their glory - and to my surprise and delight, they are both STD (standard) bore, which means that this engine has not been rebuilt before! I consulted the manual about the procedure for replacing the upper shells with the crank still in place, and I happened to read that the rods, as well as the main caps, came marked from the factory. How awesome! So could be that I am the first one to touch this motor.

Close inspection to my bearings reveals that they are actually not bad at all! I mean, replace them, definitely, but notice the wear... on a stock motor from 1989! Whoa I got my $350 worth and then some!