Hi everyone - been a lurker here for a while before I even created my account and you've all been helpful with various things over the last few years I've had my R60, but now I'm in a situation where I have to pull the engine out. I am in the planning stages of a fairly major project. I finally have all my parts on hand, but I am wondering about my approach. My clutch fork failed at 234,000km and now is the time to do some other work to help prolong the life of my little Countryman. So, he's got the turbo and the AWD and, of course, the manual transmission. The big things on the list are the clutch/flywheel and related bits and the timing chain and related bits with a new valve cover. So, I need the engine out.

From experience on Subarus before, I would pull the engine and do other bits on that, but leave the transmission in. For this I was hoping to do the same but wondered what people had encountered in their experience on these cramped engine bays. Is it easier to leave the axles on, leave the transmission and transfer case in the engine bay and just leverage and wiggle the engine off the bell housing and pull it out for the work? Or does that lead to complications that would just be easier if I pulled the axles and left the transmission and transfer box on the engine and pulled them out as one unit? I would rather be able to just pull the wheel well skirts out, the fender trim off and then have the car ramped on 4 corners and leave the subframe where it is and just pull the front end off the car and then the engine out, but I'm not sure if that works well, or works as I have it in my head.

For reference, I'm doing this in my driveway but I do have access to an engine hoist. Once it's out the timing chain, valve cover, oil pan and turbo oil in/out lines will be replaced along with the crank seals. Then the trans side doing the flywheel, clutch, fork, pivot ball and throwout bearing and cylinder.

Any advice on approach would be greatly appreciated!

 

For the record - the engine and transmission do need to come out as one piece. Lesson learned ha. There just is not enough room to pull the engine off the bell housing and spindle sideways. Now to look up how to disconnect the drive shaft to the rear end from the transfer box as I recall hearing that was finnicky.

 

I was able to remove the transmission from my R55 Clubman without dropping the engine. The subframe did need to come out first. Not sure how that would translate to the R60 Countryman All4 with the transfer box and rear driveshaft...

 

From my understanding a lot of people do it the same way with the All4 as well. I just wanted to get the engine out for some other maintenance (timing chain, oil pan etc...). So currently the car is sitting in the driveway with the front end completely remove and tomorrow I intend to get under it to release the axles and sort out popping off the drive shaft so the transmission can come out with the engine. Digging for torque specs now and this can not having a service manual from the usual places is not making it easy but hey.

 

If you get desperate, torque spec's can be found here: TisUI

It's $32 for a single day of access which is ridiculous. When I redid my engine, I tried to think ahead and download all the info I could think of in one day. For example, valve cover bolts, cam chain guide bolts, cam chain tensioner, crankshaft cam chain sprocket/hub bolt, oil pan bolts, etc etc. I'd offer it up if I could find it.

 

I'm leaning that way to the BMW TIS but that fee for 24hrs seems crazy to me. I think I'm going to bit the bullet and do it though. I'm just doing the work walk through in my head to make sure I have my spreasheet flushed out for what I need specs on so I can get it all crammed in with browsing within the 24hrs. Do you remember if it hand instructions as well that I can hopefully print off for different jobs too?

I found this (https://www.reddit.com/r/MINI/commen...r_manual_help/) post on Reddit that points to a couple of manuals. The first one linked is a downloadable html site of various things but it doesn't cover everything it seems. There is a second manual downloadable as a PDF that I'm about to check out. I just need to get the free site trial setup so I can get it and check it out before I decide if I'm hitting up that TIS.

Good news is, aside from the valve cover leak and oil pan leal, what I'm seeing so far is good news and my turbo impellor seems to be in great shape. I'm really hoping this overhaul does my R60 well and I get many more happy miles (well, kilometers eh) out of him.

 

The manual I downloaded from Scribd really seems quite good and thorough. I don't know what the source/publisher is of it but it seems to be good information based on what I've been able to look at so far. It is 166MB so I can't exactly post it here at the moment. It now has me wondering if I can pull the engine and transmission but leave behind the transfer case because that seems to be a bit of a pain to disconnect and they seem to recommend changing out the retaining clip and gasket that goes to the prop shaft and I'd rather avoid that if I can. Unless just taking the driveshaft off doesn't require that if you're not going further into the transfer case.

 

Scrolling a bit through the scribd linked manual, a lot of those pages look familiar to what I had in the TIS. But yeah to answer your question, it can take a little searching, but you find the dealership walkthrough on how to perform tasks, with references to other procedures by codified numbers, and torque specs frequently listed on the same page. Sometimes I think torque specs referenced a codified number you had to go and look up. But it's been a while, I may not remember clearly. I don't want to give the impression it would walk you through exactly what you want, but it helped me a lot when I had to get to a depth of pulling my pistons out.

 

Thanks! I appreciate your confirmation that the details seem to be accurate on this. And I certainly won't hold you to walking me through anything. Just poking and sorting and hoping that I can get this done without much hair pulling because I don't have much left ha. There's a lot of jobs but I've got more time than I have money laying around to bring it 3hrs away to a BMW dealer.

 

I'd be willing to bet you'd be better off disconnecting the rear drive shaft and dropping the transfer box with the engine-transmission assembly.

 

Yeah, I think your right, it also just seems to be right the pain in the buttocks to get that disconnected, but I'll have to check out more videos to see different plans of attack.

 

I'm going to make an attempt at removing the transfer case from the transmission, it seems possible based on this video near the 22min mark. This poor soul is swapping their engine because they had a repair on the original engine so south.


Crossing my fingers. I'm at the stage where I just need to remove the axles and then disconnect the transfer case so that's a project for some lunch breaks.