Panettone, 2010

Time for panettone again!  One of my favorite Christmas traditions; every year I try to see if I can improve it.  This year, I found a recipe on Epicurious; it's from Gourmet in December 2006 (here).  However, I only use the recipe as a general idea; I already have some of my own techniques that I use.  So here's the basic recipe as I followed it this year:

Fruit
  -1/4 cup Grand Marnier
  -1 cup candied fruit
  -1/2 cup golden raisins

Starter
  -3/4 cup warm milk
  -2 tsp yeast
  -1 1/2 cups flour

Dough
  -1 tsp yeast
  -3 eggs, room temperature
  -2/3 cup sugar
  -1 tsp salt
  -3 1/2 cups flour (give or take)
  -1 stick butter, cut into tablespoons
  -1/4 cup pecans, broken into pieces
  -1 egg, beaten

First macerate the fruit:  mix the Grand Marnier, candied fruit and raisins and let stand in a small bowl.

Next prepare the starter. Soften the yeast in the milk.  Mix the flour in until it is all well hydrated.  Cover with plastic wrap and let stand until at least double (1 hour) or as long as 12 hours.  Don't worry if it falls, all will be well.

Fruit and starter

Make the dough.  Strain the fruit and mix the Grand Marnier into the starter in the bowl of a mixer.  Add the yeast and let it hydrate.  Add the eggs, salt and sugar and start the mixer with the dough hook.  Add the flour 1/2 cup at a time and let the mixer incorporate it.  The dough will be quite stick and soft; don't be tempted to add too much flour.  Let mix on medium speed for about 5 minutes and then begin incorporating the butter one or two tablespoons at a time.  The dough will seem to fall apart, but keep mixing.  You can add more flour a tablespoon at a time to bring it all together.   Once the butter is incorporated, let it mix for another couple of minutes.  Then add the fruit mixture and pecans.  Continue mixing until it all comes together.  Shape into a ball and place in a large bowl, covered with plastic wrap to rise.

Finished dough

It was relatively cool in the house last night, so I let the dough rise for several hours, until it had well doubled.  Depending upon how warm, this could take anywhere from 2 - 6 hours.  For me it was about five last night.

From there, I shaped it:  I divided the dough in half and then make one big boule and four smaller ones.  The big one, I put in a paper panettone liner that I had bought from a bake shop.  (I used to just place it on a cookie sheet on parchment; this works fine if you don't have the paper.)  The smaller ones I placed in a set of large muffin tins that I had sprayed with non-stick spray.  (They rose so much I could have made them smaller and used all six muffin tins if I had wanted).   Then I covered them with a towel and let them rise again, another 3+ hours.

I got up around 5:30 and heated the oven to 375.  Once it was preheated, I cracked one egg, beat it and used it as a wash all over the tops of the by now well risen boules.  I placed them in the middle of the oven and let them go.  The smaller ones were done in about 30 minutes; you can tell by how brown they are on top.  (You can also use an instant read thermometer to check for an internal temperature of 180 - 190 degrees.)  The larger one took another 10 minutes.  Here are the final results:

Finished loaves

Yum!

I was very happy with the final results.  This proved to be a moist and relatively light bread.

Rebuilding My Montero Engine (continued)

10/31/10

10.   Remove the drive belts

AC belt is easy; loosen the tensioner and it comes right off.  Power steering belt is harder.  There is no tensioner and the driveshaft end is buried behind the AC pulley.  You can loosen the PS pump and move it, but I needed a second set of hands to turn the crankshaft pulley with a big socket wrench and rotate the belt off while I pushed the PS pump as close to the crankshaft as possible.

The alternator/fan belt is also easy.  The tensioner pulley (on top) loosens and then you crank it out to free the belt and take the belt off.

11.  Remove AC bracket.

The AC bracket holds the compressor in place.  Removing a few bolts allows you to take the compressor free of the bracket.  I didn't drain the AC system, so I just left the compressor connected and pushed it out of the way.  I see no reason to mess with it further; it seems like it should be easy to keep out of the way when removing the engine and then I'll just reconnect it when done.  The bracket is held on by several long bolts.  It was a bit difficult to get to a couple of them, but with a little effort I managed to remove them all and take the bracket off.  The tensioner is mounted directly on the bracket as well.  There is also a ground strap attached at the AC bracket, so it came off too.

Next I removed the fan pulley and the plate upon which it is mounted.  This is sort of odd shaped and held on by a bunch of different sized and length bolts; I hope I can remember what goes where when it's time to put it back on!  I did gather up the related bolts into plastic bags and mark them carefully (i.e. Power Steering, Fan Pulley and AC).

12.  Remove the alternator.  This is very simple at this point in time.  It's only held on by a couple of bolts/nuts and comes right off.

13.  Remove and drain the oil cooler radiator.  This isn't necessary strictly speaking.  But it occurred to me that it will still be holding some of the old oil.  So I removed it and let it drain for a while.  The only hard part is getting a wrench on the 23mm bolts that hold the lines on. But, having replaced the lines several years ago, I had a box-end wrench on hand, so it was easy to get it off.

Oil cooler, front and center

14.  Disconnect from the engine:

    * The oil cooler lines.  These are the other ends of the lines mentioned above (in 13).  They also have 23mm banjo bolts holding them on.

    * Ground strap, passenger side.

    * Heater core hoses.  These were hard, as usual.  But I was able to detach them from the firewall side if not the engine.  They'll just come out with the engine where I can remove them more easily.  I'll probably be replacing them in the end anyway.

    * Fuel lines.  The fuel pressure was relieved at the beginning, so these came right off.  Only a small amount of fuel was left to leak out.

At this point, the engine is completely disconnected from the vehicle with the following exceptions:

  1.  The engine mounts;

  2.  The transmission bell-housing to engine bolts;

  3.  The exhaust system

The first two will remain attached until I'm actually ready to pull the engine.  The exhaust system will be the next thing to detach, but this will take some work.  The exhaust manifolds are mounted to the exhaust pipes with 19mm bolts that require a socket deeper than anything I have.  And they are well buried between the engine, transmission, and other things and won't be easy to get at.  That will be my next major task.

Engine, disconnected

Rebuilding My Montero Engine

Rebuilding my Montero engine

10/29/10

Camping in Arkansas, June 2006

One other hobby that I have is working on cars. I'm not particularly adept, but it is something that I like and I've learned quite a bit through the years (mostly from all of the mistakes I've made, of course). My latest, and by far biggest, project is to pull and rebuild the engine of my beloved 1990 Mitsubishi Montero. I've had this car since it was new, driven pretty much every mile on it over the last 20 years. It's been our camping car and a family car for most of that time as well as my general commuting car.   For some reason (my inattention most likely) it's been running low oil pressure for the last five years or so. Finally last April, it gave out and either blew a head gasket or cracked a head and I had to stop driving it.

The vehicle is a 1990 Mitsubishi Montero 4-door, 4WD.  It has a 3.0L V6 SOHC engine with electronic fuel injection.  This is referred to as the 6G72, or the "S" (VIN code) engine.  It was used in a variety of Mitsubishi, Dodge and Chrysler applications from 1989 to 1994.

I spent time researching buying rebuilt or used engines.  Both are expensive and perhaps a bit of a risk, plus the fact that you have a left over engine to deal with when you're finished.  So in the end decided that I would first try pulling the engine and putting it on a stand and see if I could rebuild it. I'm pretty sure that it needs new bearings around the crankshaft; I'm hoping that it's just the head gasket that's blown and not a warped or cracked head, but I guess I'll find that out when I get a closer look at it.

So, having made my decision, last Friday (10/29/10) I set out on my quest. I'm assuming that this may take a couple of months, especially since I have no idea what I'm getting myself into once the engine is out of the car and sitting on a stand in my garage. But, unperturbed, I took my Chilton's manual and Mitsubishi service manual and got started.

For starters, here's what the engine looks like when you open the hood:

The general procedure that I used is as follows:

1. Relieve fuel line pressure.

Accessing the fuel pump throug the rear compartment 

The book makes this sound simple, just disconnect the fuel pump electrical connector, and then run the engine until it stalls. But where is this electrical connector? Both books give the simple explanation that it's on the "rear side of the fuel tank", but nothing obvious could be spotted in looking at the tank. But they also both show pictures of what it looks like, but once again, no indication of *where* you have to look to see this view. Hmmmm.  Finally, in a fit of desperation (genius?) I had the bright idea to pull back the carpet in the rear compartment of the truck, and sure enough there is a hatch in there held down by several 14mm bolts. Once I opened that, I saw exactly what the sketches in the books showed and was able to disconnect the electrical connector. At this point, the car wouldn't even start, so I assumed that after a few tries the fuel line pressure was relieved and headed on to step 2.

2. Disconnect the battery negative cable. Simple enough.

Now I headed to the engine compartment. The instructions say to remove the hood. but I decided to leave this until I needed to do it. It's likely to be a week or two before I'm ready to actually pull the engine, and in the meantime the hood will continue to provide protection in case of any inclement weather (the car will be outside during this entire process). Besides, I'll need a second set of hands to remove it, and it isn't really necessary for me to do most of the other work I have to do anyway, so I'll just wait.

3. Remove air cleaner assembly.

I took the whole thing out, starting at the very front of the engine compartment and ending at the plenum. There were several 10mm bolts holding it in, but it was easy.

4. Drain coolant and remove radiator.

I opened the draincock on the radiator and let the coolant drain (into a bucket to be recycled, of course). Once it had drained completely, I removed the upper and lower radiator hoses, detached the fan shroud and then the fan itself and removed them both, and then pulled the radiator. Eventually I'll take it to a shop to have it flow tested and then refurbished if necessary, but from the outside it looks to be in fine shape.

10/30/10

Commencing on Saturday morning, I continued to take things apart.

5. Remove the plug wires.

Easy enough. Here's a picture of the engine at this point with the air intake, radiator, fan and shroud and plug wires gone.

6. I started marking all vaccuum hoses and electrical connectors in preparation for disconnecting them.

There are a lot of electrical connectors. Mostly they are different shapes and sizes, so they should be easy to differentiate on the way back, but still... I make a rough sketch of the engine and numbered them all. Then I numbered them in the engine with masking tape and started disconnecting them. This is always a bit disconcerting: the plastic on these things is old and after 20 years of the heat in the engine compartment, some of them are pretty brittle. Still only one or two cracked as I pulled them off, so I think that I shouldn't have any trouble putting them back on.

The vaccuum hoses on the other hand are easy and there are only a few of them anyway. But still I drew them on the diagram and numbered them.

7. Remove ignition coil with bracket.

This is easy. Once it's disconnected electrically and the plug wires are gone, it's just a couple of bolts and off it comes.

8. Remove plenum.

This is a bit more work. The plenum is connected in a variety of ways. The throttle linkage cable has to come off. There are two coolant hoses that feed coolant into and out of the plenum. There are a couple of vaccuum hoses. Also the oil filler tube is attached to it. And after all that, there are the mounting bolts themselves. There are a total of eleven on this plenum. Eight that hold it directly onto the intake manifold and then three more that mount it onto brackets out on the cylinder head (driver's side). The eight are hard to see (maybe having the hood off here would help), but they're easy to get to and loosen once you find them. Oh and note that two of them are actually nuts, the mounting bolts sticking up from the intake manifold. Once all of the bolts are off, the plenum comes easily. If it doesn't lift right off, then you haven't gotten all of the bolts yet...

(I'd scan and show you my sketches here, but they are so absolutely pathetic as to be of no value to anyone but me. Thank god for digital cameras...)  The following pictures show the plenum (note the eight holes for the bolts across the center) and the intake manifold sans it.  You can see the matching holes/bolts along the manifold.

Intake plenum

Intake manifold sans plenum

9. Drain engine oil and remove oil filter.

This is standard practice. Oh, and I guess that I should mention that the skid plates are already off. They had been off for a long time, but at this point you would want to take them off anyway. And, as always, be sure to dispose of oil properly (and the filter too!)